bangsandabun.com

Homecoming Anniversary

At my leaving party in Toronto with blogger, Casie Stewart

One year ago today, I moved back to England. Looking back on my year, I can honestly say, coming home was the best decision I ever made.

There was years worth of build up to it, of course. I left England in January of 2004 for New York where I’d been offered a couple of internships. I lived there for a year and a half, struggling every day, living a hand-to-mouth existence, clinging on for dear life because I fell in love with that city the second I got off the plane and didn’t want to leave. When I finally came to the realisation that I’d run out of road, I came back to England, applied for jobs at every magazine going, got rejections from every single one and had no clue what I was going to do with my life, until I was offered a job teaching in Japan.

In October 2005, I boarded a plane for Tokyo, with no knowledge of Japanese and zero teaching experience. To say that my year spent living there was a learning curve, would be the understatement of the century. When my contract there was up, I decided to move to Canada. Having been born there, I have dual citizenship and it just seemed like an easy move. I went to Montreal first, then realised two months in that without being able to parlez the Francais, I wasn’t going to get anywhere there. So, I moved to Toronto.

And there I stayed for three years. I spent a brief eight months in Halifax, Nova Scotia (where I was born), with my extended family, but went right back to the TDot as soon as I could. This blog was born in Halifax, as I tried to figure out a way to get my writing to the masses and my incredibly supportive boss, Joanne David, at the jewellery store I worked at, believed in me enough to let me get this off the ground while I worked. When I moved back to Toronto, I came up against wall after wall when applying for PR or media jobs. So, I got a job as a travel agent to pay the rent.

I hated it. You’ve probably gathered from the tone of this blog that I may not be the best person to put in a front line customer service role. I couldn’t stand that I couldn’t be creative all day. I had to master all these different computer systems, be nice to people and actually care about where they were going, when all I wanted to do was blog.

After a year of that, I woke up one day and said ‘I don’t want to be here anymore’. I called my parents and said ‘I want to come home’. Once I said it, it was like a giant weight had been lifted off me. I’d been trying to make it work for so long, but I was a long way from home to just be surviving. It’s not like I was living the dream.

I quit my job and spent the summer in Toronto just enjoying the city and my friends as I prepared to move.

Now I’m back, everything just makes so much more sense. Having the support of family and old friends around me has been invaluable and spurred me on in a way I could never quite find in Toronto. And the blogging community here in the UK are something else altogether. I’ve met so many wonderful people since being back.

I’ve always been the person who will dive right in and see what happens. I’m not rich, far from it. Money has little to do with my experience and what I want to do in life. It’s all about drive. As long as you have that, you make it happen. What I learned from the whole experience was to make as many changes as you need to, to make your circumstances right for you.

Who knows if this is it for me? I go where the wind takes me. Wherever the next opportunity comes up, I’ll go. I don’t feel tied to any one place, which is the great thing about travel – the world is your home.

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Tags: blogging, life decisions, toronto