Nomad

“The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created--created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them, changes both the maker and the destination.”

-John Schaar

Life has been getting pretty good out here.  I finally feel like I’ve really hit my stride, and this feels like MY life now.  I don’t feel like I’m on some temporary adventure (though this is an adventure for certain), or a vacation from my actual life.  This is a new chapter in my life, and it’s really gaining momentum.

Last weekend I went out for sushi with some of the friends I’ve made here, and afterwards a few of us went to Nathan’s and played board games until 4:00 AM.  Junk food, joking around and some epic last minute wins.  It was a ton of fun.

Work has continued to go quite well.  I don’t want to count my eggs before they’re hatched, but I feel confident I’ll be getting contract renewals to keep me here for a while, hopefully long enough to prove myself worthy of a permanent position.

I continue to make new friends, and have started meeting some women through lavalife.  Bioware doesn’t exactly have a high ratio of women, and I’m in a new city, so online seems to be the only way to meet any women for now.  But I have a few prospects and one set date, so hopefully all goes well!  Of the prospects I have, they’re all quite good looking, so hopefully I click with one of them on a personal level as well.

I tried out a moustache for a while, lol.  Always wondered what it would look like, and now I know.  But it wasn’t really my style, and with a date on the horizon I decided to shave it off.

When I first got out here it was so bizarre.  I’d committed myself to doing something, for many personal and financial reasons, but now I was actually out here, and all ideas of how it would be were left in Winnipeg.  The reality of it was somehow more surreal than my speculation had been.

But I had faith in myself.  This is relatively new.  It was developed over the past few years through things like gaining clarity on the demons that had haunted me most my life, and proactive approaches like the road-trip.

It’s been exactly what I needed to take the next step on my journey as well.  Leaving Winnipeg was one of the hardest things I’ve forced myself to go through.  Seeing my friends, my life, vanish in the rear-view mirror as I drove off into the night is something I will never forget.

But it’s also been liberating.  I got out here and I had no one to answer to by myself.  This was monumental for me.  And while I make new friends here and know that relationships come with responsibility, I learned a valuable lesson through all this;  I’m the one living my life, I’m the one with the most information on my life so I will always be the one to make the final decisions in my life, informed decisions.  Outside perspective is incredibly important, but it’s a crutch if you don’t have the commitment or confidence to follow your convictions or to trust your own values and reasoning.

As the novelty started to fade, as I began to find a new me in a new city, and as I found that certain truths about one’s self are true no matter where you are, I felt a new life beginning.  And this was bizarre as well, but in a new way.  Looking back, mere months, I see a life that now seems distant and unreal.  That this new life is now my life, and the things I defined myself by ended up being circumstantial is the new sense of novelty I find.

A few nights ago I went out for a smoke.  We live at the very edge of the city, and as I have my smokes I often listen to the coyotes howling in the distance.  This particular night, from out of the darkness, one emerged.  It stood there in the field and just stared at me.  It was relaxed and calm, and one of the most cinematic moments of my life.  In no way did I feel threatened, and I stood there with my smoke, in silence, and just let myself experience it.  As I finished my smoke and began to turn to leave, so did it, and vanished back into the darkness.

I have much more to learn from this new adventure, and I have no way of knowing where it will take me.  But I do know that I’m getting stronger for it, and that it wouldn’t have been a reality if not for the strength I always possessed and never trusted, until now.