800 Miles

So yeah, spring hit me like a ton of flowery bricks.

After an apathetic if appreciatively warm winter, steadfast in my usual blahness and various, minor, weekly mental crises (the decision to join Twitter was a ridiculous inner battle of “the Merits of Participation in the Social Development of My Generation” versus the superficial horror of “Dear God! Am I Turning Into One of Those Obnoxious Rogers Kids???”), I suddenly find myself busy for a whole slew of far more productive reasons.

Firstly, my job is nuts. The economy has pretty much recovered by this point (at least in Canada…) but you wouldn’t know it at my office – the crunch has gotten bad enough that people are quitting left right and centre. And my office itself? It’s moving. The whole damn thing. Clients and everything, furniture, files, moving ahoy! Talk about your logistical clusterfuck. And me? They want me to move up the ladder a wee bit – not enough for a promotion that I don’t really want, but enough to make a bit more. And because I’m sickly twisted, I actually thrive under a weird amount of stress. In no way do I plan to stick around there forever, but while my alternative options are limited, I might as well be amazing at whatever it is I have to do. That and I am getting a gorgeous new office, and I would put up with a lot of crap to have a fantabulous working environment. It is, after all, where I spend most of my day, and there is a significant mental difference in spending all day in a dimly lit, poorly carpeted, disorganized, darkly painted, outdated craphole and a luscious new suite of nice furniture, plants, organization, art, vases, updated technology, windows, sunlight, etc.

I’m almost inappropriately excited. Yes, my job will still suck. But it will suck pretty.

The only other wrench in the career works is that a snazzy corporate office job is only one of my goals – and even then, only short term; blazers are cute for now, but eventually, after kids and ten years of life, they tend to morph into the dreaded pantsuit. The real goal is to work at home, in some aspect that lets me be all creative and hippy-dippie, with my yearned for lifestyle of waking up when my body feels like it, slow cooking good food, working from home, and free to step out for a yoga class or go out to the tea shop for a snack. (Side note: I’m now in love with tea shops.)

Well lo and holy shit behold, the potential for this exact  job has fallen into my lap. It’s careful and slow progression, and requires a lot of juggling to play all my careful little cards right, but if I do, I might just end up with a work-from-home gig that would call for occasional travel, involve some writing and design work, but also a lot of administrative corporate-without-the-commute type stuff. Soooo, perfect, yes? Yes, yes indeed. “But why not both?” says my ambitious and quirky brain, and so I am very, very carefully, laying out my long term plans.

Because it’s not just me. A few years ago I could and would have taken stupid risks for the kick of a sudden change in lifestyle – I only had myself to worry about. Quit my job and move to another continent? Suuuurrre! Now of course the most important of my plans involve living happily ever after with Josh (realistically speaking of course 😉 neither of us are above the innate human capacity to be fantastically annoying at times, but even then we’re pretty awesome.) Obviously there’s more to it than just moving one of us a couple of miles – if it were that easy, we wouldn’t be closing in on three  years of long distance. There’s lawyers, background checks, border restrictions, job requirements, and of course the sheer cost and absolute confusion of it all. Fuck, immigration is hard – especially when you don’t even know where to start or in which direction to immigrate!

But we are getting closer. After a harrowing half year of next to no employment and all the associated discouragement, Josh has a new gig in landscaping. It doesn’t pay much but at least he’s able to stay afloat, and even managed to avoid going into debt in the interim – which is a pretty amazing feat considering neither of us were exactly making six figures even before the economy went to shit. He’s doing well too! He’s only been there a couple of months and they already want to promote him to supervisor (and already would have been, except for that pesky ‘no license’ thing still hanging around from yeeeeaaaars ago.)  Honestly, in every job I’ve seen him in, his natural desire to excel has been nothing less than impressive, so I’m confident that he’ll do well.

Ideally though, I’d like to get him up here where blue collar work pays phenomenally well in comparison. We’re still not even sure if that’s going to be possible with his lingering record, and the not-so-readily available information is conflicting and overwhelming at best. Sure I could just go hire someone, but that’s a lot of money to risk without some in-depth research – I have seen far, FAR too many example of less than trustworthy behaviour in the industry, and so I’m naturally very cautious. However, a few degrees of familial separation have recently put me in contact with an incredibly reputable lawyer who can hopefully put things in motion for us, or at the very least give us a clear picture of how we need to proceed. I don’t know much yet, but fingers crossed folks, fingers crossed.

Josh is also looking to move out of his brother and sister-in-law’s house, and stay with a friend for a while until he finds the perfect apartment. Cost and location are key, and a small town like his is not exactly swimming in occupancy. I’d say wait until you find the right place, but frankly he could move out tomorrow and it wouldn’t be soon enough. I’m not here to shit talk, but I’ve been less than impressed with my general observations of the goings-on over there, and I know he’s not happy living in a stressful household. So hopefully things will be looking up for him (and us!) very soon. Yay for independence! Plus I’m itching for another visit, and it would be nice to get some love on without worrying about who’s going to be home soon, know what I’m saying? 😉

Anytits, that’s all for now. Happy to have updated all seven people who may still be wondering why I haven’t written anything in forever – you can see I’ve been otherwise occupied! But I have noticed that what started as a bloggy attempt to track our progress in closing the physical distance between us has dissolved into one-sided time-killing bitching about the television. Not that I’ll stop any of that (indeed, our mutual criticism and discussion of media, politics, news, advertising, etc. is 1) important for any individual; 2) an integral part of daily conversation between Josh and I; and 3) I love every minute of it; 4) PS don’t even ask me what Glenn Beck is up to right now…) But I did want to get an actual update in, just in case I read back years from now and start to wonder what the hell I was doing all this time.

So, while things start to (hopefully) move more quickly, I might not get to write that often. Or, maybe things will get really exciting and I’ll be writing all the time. Either way, follow along if you wish – and if you really want the fascinating details of my every day, you can now find me on the Twitter machine.