It's the little things...

I'm thankful that there are always things to look foward to...

Like Seahawks victories...

And Downton Abbey...

And not setting foot outside but still being happy.

Honestly uncomfortable.

I'm over saying, "Fine." or lying, "Great!" whenever someone asks me how I'm liking Toronto. Lately I've been completely honest. More than once I've embraced my inner Debbie Downer and uttered the phrase, "I've never been more unhappy in my entire life." The first time time I said it out loud it surprised me. Honesty is uncomfortable.

Sometimes the conversation ends right there and I get a nervous, "Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that."

Sometimes people laugh out loud at my unexpected response. They offer an impromptu pep talk and that moment of connection lifts my spirits for the day. Note to self: Be that moment for someone else.

People from British Columbia get it though. When I tell them we moved from the Pacific Northwest we bond over visions of Vancouver and Victoria and pine trees and mountains and coastlines and how the air is  different there. They confide how hard it was for them when they first relocated to the other side of Canada and they promise it gets better (but confess the yearning never goes away).

Being honest allows other people to be honest for the first time too. Sometimes people tell me about how sad and stuck they were once and how they got over it. Sometimes it's not who you would expect. Every story helps me put things into perspective. With every connection I become a little less uncomfortable.

This is how we'll get out of here...

Moving to Toronto was the biggest mistake we ever made.  Now what? Right now we're stuck.  One year from now I hope to be unstuck, in a new place, with meaningful work and a nice house with a yard and garden and some friends... what we had in Seattle; what we gave up to be here.

Why did we leave?   I'm still trying to piece that back together. Suffice it to say we followed a dream that turned into a nightmare as soon as we got to Toronto. The good news is I am almost over the grieving part. I'm ready to chase our next adventure wherever it may lead us. I have faith we'll end up where we're meant to be, eventually.

Here are my goals for the new year:
 

1. Go three consecutive days without crying, spontaneously, at the slightest reminder of how much I miss my old life. My record is two days right now. I'm able to pull myself back together more quickly now too, rather than succumbing to heaving sobs on the couch. This is progress.

2. Recognize happiness when it happens. Seek experiences to make us like this place more.  Try to find humor in this hell.

3. Realize this is not hell. No one died. Everyone is healthy and relatively happy, despite the circumstances. Our situation is not fatal. We will recover what we lost.

4. Spend less time sifting through cyber stimuli and staring at other people's lives.  Spend less time crushing candies and more time making a better life in the real world.

5. Keep doing kokoleo. Make a new website, find a new venue and lighten my inventory.

6. Find another city to live in (preferably one that's cheaper with houses that have better backyards). Visit that city ahead of time. Make sure the job is legit before we move there and also factor in the cost of living. Call ahead to see if they have mountains.

7. Be somewhere better this time next year.

8. Start over from scratch and then carve out a niche. Create the community I want to see.

9. Find joy in the struggle.

10. Write about it along the way.

Here's to a new year.

Soo... the last few posts have been pretty sad. I'm happy to say I'm through the grieving stage, I think, and on to the resigned stage. Still heartbroken that we could have stayed in Seattle but we chose Toronto instead. A bit perplexed that we couldn't see how good we had had it and why we didn't try to stay. But what can we do? We can't go back. We just have to keep searching for something better. I am kind of excited that 2016 will be the year we do it.

Or the year we make another big mistake. Who knows?

I'm betting on something better.

Stranded in Canada

Maybe it was my negative attitude that attracted this wave of bad luck, or maybe my intuition was telling me all along that something worse was yet to come. Either way, it's apparent now we've made a terrible mistake in moving to Toronto.

Last Wednesday, the day before my birthday (also Thanksgiving, and my parents were visiting) my husband came home at noon (he never comes home at noon). He went in for his 3 month review (the point in which our benefits would kick in) and he was told they "couldn't find a place for him" and they were letting him go.

What kind of company spends $30K+ to move a family across the country, puts them in a fancy high rise hotel for 2 weeks, pays to store all our belongings while we find a house, and then doesn't actually have a job to offer after all? How can whoever makes the hiring and firing decisions not see that they asked a family to relocate to a foreign country and then left them stranded? He wasn't even there long enough to form any lasting connections. We have no family or friends here, no job leads for either of us, and it's Christmastime to boot. Merry fucking Christmas.

This supposed dream job has become a nightmare. We have no reason to be here. We sold our beloved house in Seattle. I gave up my job. For what? A struggle greater than any we could have imagined. This is our rock bottom, I think. I can't imagine it can get any worse.

I'm a stranger in a strange land.

This sadness comes and goes in waves. Most days I'm fine and in public I'm fine but when I'm all alone (which is a lot) sometimes I break down. The smallest thing can trigger it like a photo or kid drawing from when we lived in our old house, or it comes when I'm just sitting on the couch staring straight ahead wondering what I should do with myself.

I realize this is a luxury many people do not have. I know I should cherish and appreciate it. I see photos of terror attacks in Paris and Syrian refugees and I know I have it easy. (Seeing photos of terror and refugees is no doubt contributing to my sadness.) I'm trying desperately to see beauty around me but missing mountains, and green, my old job, and our old house. I do not love my new house. My backyard makes me want to turn around and go back inside. My studio makes me feel claustrophobic. We're renting now, for $1,000 more a month than we were paying for a house we owned that had a garden and fish pond and trees we planted. I am not cut out for city living. I miss suburbia.

Scratching the Niche

I just read over my last post and wow, that was sad. I'm not that sad anymore. I still don't love it here, but I am at least looking for things to like. There are worse things than being a lonely housewife in a foreign land. I need to embrace this newness and slowly find my niche.

I keep looking in shop windows and envisioning kokoleo. It's like when I looked in the empty rec building and saw Club Teasdale. There's just something about an empty space that makes me want to fill it. I have enough inventory amassed in my more creative days when I was actively doing craft shows and selling in shops. Maybe if I had the space to create I would start up again. I miss the energy and excitement that comes from making things. My new studio is so suffocatingly small I can't even stand to be in it for more than a few minutes. There are too many reminders of things I used to make and do and projects I never finished. There are too many supplies that need to be turned into something new and rather than feeling inspired, I'm overwhelmed.

Clearly my situational depression is linked to not making anything beyond school lunches and piles of laundry. When I think back to the times when I was a manic thing-making machine it was when I was inspired by my environment - working toward craft shows, having kokoleo in neighborhood shops, answering calls for artists and participating in group shows, working on community projects and events. This is the niche I need to carve for myself again. Right now the only niche I'm carving is a divot in the couch. I can't force it. But I can get up and go for a walk.

... which is where I keep encountering empty storefronts. It's not that this area is a ghost town (like downtown Renton was becoming). The empty ones are randomly spaced between established shops and galleries and restaurants. I've made it a point to visit some of these shops and am getting to know the owners, trying to see if and where I could fit in. Next week I'm taking some of the kokoleo items currently crowding my studio to a few shops on Kingston Rd who have expressed an interest. The conversations I have with these people are my therapy. I am learning what this neighborhood likes and needs and would love to see. I am starting to write a business plan for the space I want to create. It's just a pipe dream for now, but it's a better thing to focus on than how sad I am. It's the first glimmer of excitement I've felt since we moved and I'm going with it.