17 Apr 2006
Well, I’m moved in to my new apartment now. By moved in I mean that all of the boxes and furniture are in it, I have cable and internet hooked up, and I have cooked at least one meal there.
It was really nice to sleep in my own bed again this weekend. It made for a lot of lazy sleeping in.
I got my phone number changed this weekend, so if anyone tried to call and couldn’t get a hold of me; that’s why.
This morning was the first trip to work from my new place. There really isn’t anything amazing about that. I had to take a bus though. People who know me, know I hate buses. It went better then I could have hoped. I believe that since it is Easter Monday and a lot of people have it off that the transit system wasn’t very crowded, so it was a good day to start. I didn’t even get lost, which is what normally happens.
I’m really liking my neighbourhood. I’ve already found a great restaurant where I will be taking anyone who visits. Much like I took everyone who visited me in Montreal to Villa du Souvlaki, or at least tried to. There is a place here called Stepho’s that everyone tells me I should go to if I like souvlaki. I’ll probably check it out this weekend. I’ve been missing my Sunday souvlaki. The Saturday Korean BBQ has been a good substitute though. Certainly the conversation is always entertaining.
It seems that living next door to a grocery store is every bit as convenient as I ever thought it would be. I think I’ll be stopping by there every day on the way home from work to pick up various odds and ends. They have some great chocolate milk that comes in the classic glass milk bottles. Stylish, trendy and tasty.
I brought some friends over to show them my place after lunch on Saturday. In typical “Sean” fashion I am way out of my league in my building. As I took my friends in and we were walking through the lobby one of them while looking around actually asked “Do I have to wear a suit when I come and visit you now?” Haha.
That is all for this random update.
10 Apr 2006
Everyone just has to see this Exotic Coach Jetmousine/LimoJet
05 Apr 2006
I got my place today. The lease is signed. The damage deposit has been paid. I can’t wait to move in. I should be moving in on the 13th hopefully :)
I can’t believe I got it. I really can’t seem to believe anything any more. Moving out to Vancouver just seems to have been the right thing to do. Everything seems to be going well. I find myself randomly smiling all day long. I love turning around at my desk and looking at the mountains.
The work is interesting. Vancouver is wonderful. My apartment is great. The location is unbelievable.
I was wandering around my new neighbourhood a bit today, and I just absolutely love it.
I walk out of my building and turn to the right and there is a grocery store. Just past that is a movie theatre. A little down the street is a Denny’s. Across from that I can get gourmet hot chocolate and fresh baked pastries. The Sky Train is something like 500m away. There’s a huge HMV nearby to feed my music cravings. There must be half a gazillion restaurants within a three block radius. And! And! I can get a 10 Mbps internet connection!
I don’t know what to do when things go this well. It just doesn’t happen in my life.
03 Apr 2006
So it’s all going well so far. This whole switching jobs and moving across the country thing.
I’m not a huge fan of living in a hotel, but I’m getting by. At least I found an okay pizza place that delivers to it when I don’t make it to the cafeteria at work for supper before it shuts down.
The cafeteria here is flat out amazing! If you like Stir Fry, Pizza, Ribs, Burgers, Fries, Onion Rings, Salads, Sandwhiches, Soups, umm, yeah, pretty much you name it and it’s here. It’s even good food. Those are just the daily, regular, items you can get. They also have coolers filled with deserts, racks of Old Dutch Potato chips for munching on, stands of chocolate bars, and of course all of the health choices such as granola bars and muffins, hippie drinks, etc.
I can see why some of my friends have said that they don’t really buy groceries anymore. They just have lunch and supper at the cafeteria and eat out/order in on weekends.
I am still looking for a place to live. I found a place that I put an application in on, but I haven’t heard anything back yet. I would really like to get this place though. Now, going out on a limb and saying that, should pretty much mean that I won’t get it, but, wow is it ever nice and in a great location :)
All is clear on the western front. Rain. Mountains. Ocean. City. It’s all good. Having friends who moved out here ahead of me definitely helps as well. A few of us went to a place called Shabusen for lunch on Saturday. It was really good. I gave sushi another shot, but it failed again. There was some sesame dressing coated spinach that was good. It was kind of like eating crunchy peanut butter. I still can’t believe that spinach was made edible. The rest of the smorgasbord was pretty great as well.
I failed at the chopsticks :(
24 Mar 2006
Endings are always strange to me. I’ve never been an ender. I like to start things, and I like to keep them going.
At points in your life, you have to make decisions. No matter how much you may hate making them. You have to make decisions, and you have to live with the consequences. You can’t let those consequences consume you. You can’t let the consequences of previous decisions consume you either.
I am guilty of letting myself be consumed by many things. World of Warcraft. Bad relationships. Past experiences. Sure, these are the things that make us who we are, and some of them we have to hang on to, but some of them we do have to find a way to let go of for our own good.
Once upon a time I let my life be consumed by work. All I did was work. During the rare times I was awake and not at work I would complain about work. This was horrible, and destructive, and it affected everyone around me. I never wanted to be “that” guy. I still don’t know how it happened.
I deal with stress in a very simple way now. It is either important, or it isn’t. If it isn’t, I don’t stress over it. What exactly is and isn’t important is generally fairly arbitrary. Here I am picking my life up and throwing it all over and moving across the country. What are my concerns? I hope I find a place to live within the first couple of weeks out there. I hope I don’t end up having to spend too much money on useless crap. I hope I can find a way to attend, or have someone attend for me all of my raid groups MC/BWL raids.
Those first two, those are normal stress concerns. That last one, that comes from a messed up sense of value. Or does it? When you spend enough time with a group of people, good or bad, they start to become your family. Surely family is an important concern?
We all need to find our own balance in life. That ratio of us vs. everything else that makes us feel complete. Some of us need a lot of us, some of us need a lot of everything else. I’m still working on finding mine. I’m sure some people spend their whole lives searching for it.
Back to how I deal with stress. Stress hits me like an ocean wave hits a rock. It hits hard, but it breaks over me, not the other way around. In many ways this leaves me feeling detached from things. Right now, I am barely involved in this major change in my life. A lot of the time it feels like I am sitting on the outside watching it happen to someone else. Eventually, when it has all passed by, I hope I get a chance to enjoy it.
Other people, when they get hit by the wave, they get pushed along with it or crushed by it. There is nothing else they can do. They are just there floating in the middle of it all slowly getting pulled out into a sea of despair. There is nothing anyone else can do for these people. They have to decide to swim all on their own, and they have to swim back to that shore line.
Unfortunately in that place that they are, there is nothing but darkness. Darkness is the great equalizer and the great seperator. Most people faced with the darkness imagine everything horrible that could possibly happen and they get consumed by it. It just piles on top of all of the bad things that they are already dealing with by getting worse. It stacks, and stacks, and stacks, until something breaks. Other people, take that bewilderment and despair and start to imagine that there is a rope there, or a life preserver, or a flashlight and they start looking for it. They start working toward it. They start making it happen.
I used to blame the world for everything bad that happened to me. I used to believe that the world owed me something. The world wasn’t listening. It didn’t care. So I said “Fuck you world!” and I set out and started doing things myself. I started taking those steps toward shore. It has been a long trip, and I’m still on it. I’m on the shore, and now I can see the mountain. I’m not ready to stop yet, so I’ll keep pushing. I’ll do everything I can do, because if I just give up, well then, it’s over before it starts.
Here’s the kicker: How do you really know that it has even started yet? Maybe this is all just the prequel for the main feature. So you have to keep pushing. You have to keep going. You have to tell yourself it doesn’t hurt. You have to tell yourself this isn’t the end. Some days you will get kicked in the teeth and fall to the floor, but you just have to get up.
I’m not someone who hopes. I don’t pray. I don’t even believe in all that much. I push forward though, to discover. To know. To find. Good or bad. You will always get some of each eventually.
It’s not about hope. It’s about self.