General me update
Well, as usual it's been a very long time since I've seriously posted here.
I had kind of a blah year getting over my reverse culture shock and readjusting to Canada. Lots of good things happened but most of it's a blur. I think that the same thing happened when I moved to Japan so I must just be the type who needs a full 8-9 months to acclimatize.
I got rehired at the hospital kitchens in February, just after my grandmother passed, and since then I think I've definitely been on the upswing. I got help from the local job skills centre and put out some resumes but I couldn't really pick a direction I wanted to go in. I think the thought that I might have to put out more than 100 resumes before even hearing anything back kind of got me down. I played a lot of Skyrim and watched a lot of Netflix for a while there. I did buy my first North American car in June, when my pension return came in from Japan, and I love her to bits. She's a silver 2006 Toyota Matrix and between the pension and my job I didn`t have to get too much of a loan.
This summer I randomly mentioned GIS to a friend of my mom's when we were discussing where I wanted to go with my life (I'm still working on the not talking about me so much thing) and she told me to check at the local college where she and mom work because she was sure they had a program like that. So thought about it and decided that it was definitely something that interested me. I checked out the website, made an appointment with one of the professors to talk, and within two weeks I was accepted into the 1-year Advanced Diploma program and approved for a depressingly large new student loan.
Boom. Life is suddenly moving almost to fast to keep up with again. Mom and I moved our trip to PEI and Nova Scotia up to last week because if we didn't go then we would have had to wait until after my co-op ends next year. And work -- where, during school months, I am lucky to get called once a week -- suddenly wants me all the time.
I`m excited and nervous about going back to school. What if I`m nearly a decade older then all of my classmates? This isn't something I've ever had to worry about before. And what if I'm still just as much of a procrastinator as before and I can't hack it? What if I'm rubbish at programming?
But on the other hand I can feel my brain spinning in delight at the thought of all that learning after a year in what it must have seen as pretty much a desert. And I am so ready to be somewhere mentally that is not where I've been dawdling since I came back to myself again. And I think I'm finally ready to make some new friends again. For months after I left my Japan crew I couldn't even stomach the thought of trying to build things up from nothing again. Maybe that`s an age thing, too? The more you hurt yourself the more you fear the pain when it inevitably happen again?
Anyway, I`m pretty happy about the way things are going. I`m really excited to see where I`ll be next year. It never turns out to be anywhere near the places I think I might be going. It`ll be fun! And in the meantime if I get too stressed I have more than 2 pounds of fiber to card up, spin, and knit as well as a giant pile of books to read.
I had kind of a blah year getting over my reverse culture shock and readjusting to Canada. Lots of good things happened but most of it's a blur. I think that the same thing happened when I moved to Japan so I must just be the type who needs a full 8-9 months to acclimatize.
I got rehired at the hospital kitchens in February, just after my grandmother passed, and since then I think I've definitely been on the upswing. I got help from the local job skills centre and put out some resumes but I couldn't really pick a direction I wanted to go in. I think the thought that I might have to put out more than 100 resumes before even hearing anything back kind of got me down. I played a lot of Skyrim and watched a lot of Netflix for a while there. I did buy my first North American car in June, when my pension return came in from Japan, and I love her to bits. She's a silver 2006 Toyota Matrix and between the pension and my job I didn`t have to get too much of a loan.
This summer I randomly mentioned GIS to a friend of my mom's when we were discussing where I wanted to go with my life (I'm still working on the not talking about me so much thing) and she told me to check at the local college where she and mom work because she was sure they had a program like that. So thought about it and decided that it was definitely something that interested me. I checked out the website, made an appointment with one of the professors to talk, and within two weeks I was accepted into the 1-year Advanced Diploma program and approved for a depressingly large new student loan.
Boom. Life is suddenly moving almost to fast to keep up with again. Mom and I moved our trip to PEI and Nova Scotia up to last week because if we didn't go then we would have had to wait until after my co-op ends next year. And work -- where, during school months, I am lucky to get called once a week -- suddenly wants me all the time.
I`m excited and nervous about going back to school. What if I`m nearly a decade older then all of my classmates? This isn't something I've ever had to worry about before. And what if I'm still just as much of a procrastinator as before and I can't hack it? What if I'm rubbish at programming?
But on the other hand I can feel my brain spinning in delight at the thought of all that learning after a year in what it must have seen as pretty much a desert. And I am so ready to be somewhere mentally that is not where I've been dawdling since I came back to myself again. And I think I'm finally ready to make some new friends again. For months after I left my Japan crew I couldn't even stomach the thought of trying to build things up from nothing again. Maybe that`s an age thing, too? The more you hurt yourself the more you fear the pain when it inevitably happen again?
Anyway, I`m pretty happy about the way things are going. I`m really excited to see where I`ll be next year. It never turns out to be anywhere near the places I think I might be going. It`ll be fun! And in the meantime if I get too stressed I have more than 2 pounds of fiber to card up, spin, and knit as well as a giant pile of books to read.