18 sleeps

For those of you that read this blog, the next two weeks will likely be filled with manic, self-indulgent, perhaps narcisstic, emotionally conflicting blog entries. Stop now if that bores you. When I started this blog, I decided it would be an online diary of how I feel about moving back to Canada after 13 years of travelling, warts and all. So, take it or leave it. If you are looking for the witty, fun, light-hearted T-Lo, she'll pop her head up here and there over the next few weeks, but serious self-critical T-Lo is in full effect right now. (did I just refer to myself in the third person? Twice?!)

OK. This UN thing. After debating with myself, my family, respected colleagues and loved ones, I've done the following:

1. Confirmed my willingness to do the assignment.
2. Uploaded my most recent CV.

The assignment starts 11 July. That means that I have six weeks in Canada to see how things pan out. I'm really caught over this whole thing. On one hand, I want to go back to Canada, chill with my family, get a 'proper job', settle down in TO, get a cat and call her McLovin (you see how I've planned?! I've already got a name for my to-be-grey kitten!), train with Alin, normalize relations with the Hammer...then, this F**KING UN thing comes through at the 11th hour, the last minute, the final hour. This is the job I have wanted for the last ten years. But sometimes, when you get what you want, you don't want it anymore, right? Like, you were focused on the wrong thing, you know? DomTastic (DomAss?) yelled at me in the midst of a self-indulgent moangroan session I was having: she said that maybe I have to look at it as the universe having perfect timing. Hmmmm......

I'll tell you, I haven't gone through a phase like this since June 1997. Then, I had no money and had everything I own stolen. I had no idea where I would sleep at night, where my next meal would come from, how I would earn money to survive.... That was on the front end of my little Africa adventure. Now, on the back end, I had my TheNotTheBullet stolen 8 days after I had the insurance cancelled (long story, don't ask, still beating myself repeatedly for that). Now TheNotTheBullet money was my 'transition slush fund' for when I got back..I would be able to take a couple of months to settle in, readjust, train properly and get into the groove of things before having to dive full on into some hectic work environment. That is no longer an option. I am using my move-everything-across-the-ocean money as my slush fund, which means that I have to get rid of everything here. I've reduced my life into one 30kg bag of clothing and one kist of books. And it's kind of sad to look at the one lonely, slightly overstuffed bag and the pitifully reduced collection of books and think to yourself - is this it? Is this what my life amounts to? Is this the sum total of my accomplishments? Some clothes and a few books?

I'll try to explain how I feel: I feel like, no matter what I do or how I plan or what I want, I have absolutely no control over what's going to happen with my life over the next couple of years (gawd I hope it doesn't last that long!). Like, you are paddling a boat, with that monkey on your shoulders, and you are coming up to a waterfall, and you try to eddy out or backpaddle away or sit behing a rock or hug a tree to avoid going over that bloody thing, but no matter what you do or how you do it, you are still going over. And you are going over right now.