I was born in England but emigrated to Vancouver, Canada in 2006 after years of waiting for our Permanent Residence application to be processed. Each and every day I think to myself “I’m so glad we moved!”. I love Vancouver and it feels more like home than any other place I’ve visited or lived in. The only thing I miss about the UK is family and friends but the world is a much smaller place now thanks to Email and Facebook and Skype, so really it’s not all that hard to be away.
I love BC, especially the coast and those mountains! I’ve travelled around it a fair bit but there are so many places here that I want to visit that I need to retire now to experience them all.
I love hiking, kayaking, snowshoeing and generally just being outdoors, but I’m not as fit as I should be due to my equal love of eating, drinking, socialising in places where I can eat and drink, and sitting on the couch watching hockey or comedy programmes or British TV gems like Dr Who.
I really liked school and was good at everything. I chose to study history at university which, while interesting, was really silly of me as it left me with no practical skills for a career. I thought that I wanted to be a librarian so I entered the library profession. Then I realised that I didn’t want to study to become a librarian as it wasn’t for me, but library work was my only work experience and what I was good at. When I moved to Canada I wouldn’t have minded starting afresh but we were so desperate to get jobs and not eat up our savings that it wasn’t really an option to attempt to find something outside of the field that we were already experienced in.
But, now I’m settled, I really want to pursue a different career. I’m not unhappy in my job, but I’m not exactly enjoying it either as I don’t feel at all challenged or stimulated. I think I owe it to myself to see what other possibilities lie out there for me in the world of work.
I like to quote Ralph Waldo Emerson.
