This is my fourth 16th of June in Ireland, a place I moved to because of its literary influence. The amount of respected writers this country has produced was the excuse I used to convince myself that I had to leave family and friends behind and pursue a masters in creative writing in a much wetter, windier country.

Here I have studied in the house where Oscar Wilde spent his youth, had a chat with poet Patrick Kavanagh by the canal several times and even sought inspiration in some of the most prestigious watering holes in Dublin — however to my disgrace and embarrassment this is another year I spend Bloomsday at home, ashamed to go outside and display my ignorance.

No, I have not yet read James Joyce’s Ulysses. Despite being a writer living in Dublin. Shame. Shame. Ding-dong. Shame. Shame.

My copy of the book is there, physical not digital, laying on my shelf getting yellow and marked on the page 112 for the past six years. I can’t seem to be able to go any further than that. Every time I try our hero Leopold Bloom gets into the carriage with his pals Cunningham, Power and Dedalus and I miss the trip. I give up.

It’s not that Ulysses is a difficult read. Obviously a mastermind like Joyce’s and mine are rarely in sync, so, yeah, sometimes his transitions from inner dialogues to descriptive passages might get a little frustrating. But the biggest problem is how prestigious this book is in the literary world; if I don’t get it then maybe I’m not ready to be part of it, so I stop.

I lay it down and weep. It stays there, looking at me as though I’m the biggest failure there is, a deceiving hypocrite who can’t admit his inability to write. Or read.Or move on with his life without beating himself up with guilty and shame.

Every year I haven’t read Ulysses for the first time I realise how childish this idea is. I cannot possibly know if I understand it or not until I turn onto the last page and update my status on Goodreads. And even if I fail to grasp its ideas on my first read: the beauty of a book is that it changes every time you return to it. So I am concious that I am fooling no-one but myself here.

At the same time, however, I don’t think I was prepared to get to the end of it before. I don’t think I ever thought I could possibly be part of the literary world, live to and for the art of writing (and get monetary compensation out of it too). I still needed a level of maturity that doesn’t come with age, but with experience. Now the fog seems to be finally dissipating.

“The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring.” — James Joyce in Ulysses

This year my frustration for not being part of the Bloomsday celebrations feels a bit different. I am not feeling behind anyone like I did before, nor am I going to make promises for 2016. Now Ulysses is just another book that I want to read not because I have to. If I want to effectively become a Dubliner I think I have to read James Joyce’s other masterpiece first.

It helps, of course, that there’s already a whole festival planned around it for next year. Maybe I’ll use that as a deadline. No pressure, though.