{"id":367692,"date":"2026-03-27T08:14:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T08:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/367692\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T08:14:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T08:14:09","slug":"after-10-years-writing-for-the-irish-times-this-is-my-last-column-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/367692\/","title":{"rendered":"After 10 years writing for The Irish Times, this is my last column \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been writing on and off for The Irish Times for nearly 10 years. I don\u2019t \u201cpractise gratitude\u201d because, like assertiveness, that\u2019s for Americans. But thank you; even if you read me just to comment \u201cthis is rubbish\u201d under the articles on social media<\/a> (I appreciate you CoRkBoI_69). <\/p>\n

Here are the valuable life lessons I\u2019ve learned in that time. <\/p>\n

Grieving is full-time work<\/p>\n

The best and worst writing job I was ever offered was to write my nephew\u2019s eulogy. It was an awful honour, to be asked by my brother to tell the world one final time who his son was and what he meant to us all, before he put his baby into the ground in the smallest coffin I have ever seen and ever hope to see. <\/p>\n

How do you write a eulogy about a child who only had five short years alive? It turns out it\u2019s at the kitchen table with your sister-in-law while she decides what finger food to serve at the wake; because even on the worst days of her life, she will continue to marvel you with her ability to think of others. When someone dies, there\u2019s the comfort that they lived a good life. When a child dies you have an all-consuming rage. It is unfair. Nothing matters any more. How can you go back to work, watch sports and talk to friends about their renovations when we live in a world where innocent children die for no reason at all? You don\u2019t sometimes. You cannot hurry grief, you have to let it have its way with you. There is no way over or under \u2013 just through it. You can do all the journaling, the breathwork, the ice baths you want. But grief will not be hurried. <\/p>\n

Mind your friends going through it, they will always remember the people who did even the smallest kind thing during their time in the emotional hole of sadness. <\/p>\n

As my dear friend once told me: always start a new job with all four grandparents alive<\/p>\n

You never know when Ireland will have a World Cup play-off on the other side of the world and you have to \u201cpull a Stephen Ireland\u201d on it, as one Irish fan on their way to Prague admitted to RT\u00c9 this week. If anyone recognises him at his Melbourne job, no you didn\u2019t. <\/p>\n

You will work every day of your life if you have a job you love <\/p>\n

Sometimes even harder, because your sense of self will be tied to a \u201ccalling\u201d. You have to accept your keenness will be taken advantage of, especially in the early years. Make sure you eventually get comfortable saying \u201cno\u201d, \u201cthat\u2019s not enough money\u201d and \u201cthat\u2019s too much work\u201d. <\/p>\n

If you are a woman, have a disability, are LGBTQI+ or have a culturally diverse or working-class background, people may try to make you feel like you should just be happy they gave you a chance. If someone accuses you of having a chip on your shoulder, it\u2019s because they\u2019re uncomfortable acknowledging they had a head start. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Brianna Parkins: The invisible working-class line where things are \u2018not for people like us\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Everyone wants to believe they earned everything through hard work. This is almost never true. We are all combinations of opportunity, timing, genetics, some choice and sheer dumb luck. While that might be depressing, it also means you are never really more than one good year of things going your way from getting what you want. It\u2019s the hope that kills you, but it also keeps you from giving up. <\/p>\n

Your body will give out before your brain if you keep ignoring it<\/p>\n

I really thought I could just push through. Grit my teeth and \u201cmind over matter\u201d my way into success. Through no sleep, witnessing traumatic events, 50-hour work weeks and dinners scavenged from vending machines because I didn\u2019t have time to leave my desk. Of course it all came back to bite me in the arse so badly I can\u2019t sit down without a humiliating cushion. So mind yourself, no one else is going to. <\/p>\n

This is my last column for The Irish Times. We\u2019ve taken a ride together, from the Rose of Tralee contestant<\/a> with spidery eyelash extensions to the tired but satisfied bog hag I\u2019m proudly becoming now, and you\u2019ve been great company. Thank you for your letters, your emails, your cards and your DMs. They meant more to me than you\u2019ll ever know. Right, I\u2019ll let you go now … bye, bye, bye.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019ve been writing on and off for The Irish Times for nearly 10 years. I don\u2019t \u201cpractise gratitude\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199953,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[24401,93,631,61,60,709],"class_list":["post-367692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-brianna-parkins","tag-entertainment","tag-for-you","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-magazine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}