For all intents and purposes, Ashleigh is a great person. She has a well paying job, has responsibilities of her own that she manages without any help from anyone else, and she is kind to others when she is isn’t threatening (out of earshot of anyone of importance) to take part in the good ol’ Canadian past time of letter writing to air her grievances. She also isn’t that hard on the eyes, either.

I met Ashleigh shortly after I moved back to Canada. Looking for something to do, I realized that I hadn’t spoken to a few friends in months, of which one was having a birthday party at a local sushi place. Not wanting to miss out on sushi, I happily came along and ate my raw seafood. Yum. It was at sushi that I first met her. She was at the other end of the unusually long table, but nevertheless we exchanged pleasantries and went about our dinner not really talking to each other.

After dinner, we went next door to what I can only describe as an Irish-pub-meets-nice-restaurant. Celtic music in the background mixed with plain colored tables and carpet really didn’t mesh, but I’m getting off topic. We ended up sitting next to each other and doing the usual “What do you do?” “Oh well what do you do?” small talk that everyone seems to default to when meeting someone new.

After a few drinks we all decided we’d had enough “rockin’ celtic music,” we all made our way outside and stood under the over hang which was the only thing preventing the rain from soaking us. Unfortunately, between the 6 or 7 of us that were there, we couldn’t decide on anything to do. Ashleigh had suggested bowling, and I figured that was as good a suggestion as any, so I “sided with her.”

A few of the others were vehemently against this idea, but somehow our powers of persuasion were successful, and we all piled into our cars and headed towards the bowling alley. Of course, we spent so much time arguing about what to do that by the time we arrived, the place was closing up.

Oh well.

At any rate, we ended up playing pool at a pool hall not really close to anyone’s house now that I think about it, but we had enough chances to talk being that we were on the same team that we decided to continue seeing each other.

We met a couple times after pool, and it was clear we liked each other. She had just got out of a relationship with someone I’m told was less than decent, so to say she wasn’t interested in getting into another so soon would be the understatement of the year. I completely understood; I wouldn’t want to be pressured into something like that when I had just got out of one.

After a month and a half of “seeing each other” however, this mindset still hadn’t changed. Maybe I’m at fault for trying to rush things, I don’t know, but I’d like to think that after a month and a half of seeing someone nearly every day for many hours at a time, you should be comfortable enough in your own perceptions of someone to be able to judge whether or not you want to consider this person your boyfriend or not. Apparently my view isn’t shared, because on Sunday when we finally spoke after nearly a week of not seeing each other, she decided to end whatever it was we did have at the time.

I understand that she’s going through some shit of her own right now, so I don’t fault her for feeling the way she does. Sometimes people just have differing opinions on things and that’s OK. If I got upset every time someone had an opinion that was different from me, I would just start crying and never stop, but since I don’t, I’m not going to let it get me down.

I am going to ask the wonderful internet for advice though: from an outsider’s perspective, do I seem needy? I really do care for her, and if she had told me that she was getting to that point where she’d want to consider me her boyfriend, I could accept that, but the fact that things were just stagnating, and rather than progressing (even at a snail’s pace), things were going nowhere, I felt like this wasn’t something that I could continue.

The only way I can relate it to anything is learning. I absolutely cannot stop learning. Whether it’s about why an electron is able to stay in perfect geosynchronous orbit with a nucleus in an atom, or why yellow is the new black this season, I cannot go a single day without filling my brain with information (useful or otherwise.) This to me, is progressing; my brain is never content with the amount of information in it, and always needs to be adding more and more. Whether I’m learning something useful like how to change a tire with only a tub of vaseline and a rubber band, or something completely useless like why such-and-such rubber is used in the space shuttle versus such-and-such other rubber, I’m still learning. Just like my relationship with Ashleigh; I don’t care what the final outcome of her decision would be, as long as she was making progress towards a solution.

In the end, I’m sure I’ll be OK. I’m going to do my best not to let this breakup (is it even a breakup if we were never officially dating?) affect me too much but I’ve got to be honest, she holds the titles for both smartest and best looking when it comes to women I’ve had a relationship with (however you want to define it.)

Am I over-thinking things? Probably. Am I going to learn something from all this? You’re damn right I am, even if I don’t know what that is yet.

No, the reason I say that is there’s finally a light at the end of the tunnel in terms of work for me. Please let me explain. Tuesday morning, I woke up in a bit of a funk. I don’t know what specifically caused it, but what I do know is that I no longer had the patience to deal with going into work at Sobey’s any longer. Maybe it was the tonsillitis wearing me down, maybe it was the fact that I had absolutely no motivation to make barely over minimum wage to be condescended to by any idiot who doesn’t understand the difference between a tomato and toilet paper. Anyways, I woke up, decided I wasn’t going to go anymore, and my life has seemingly been better ever since.

After making such an executive decision, I decided that my brain needed a rest, so I went back to sleep for a while longer before waking up to start job hunting again. Ashleigh and I drove around to a bunch of different retail stores around my area, but every time I so much as pulled into the parking lot of each of them, all I could feel was this sense that if I was to get a job in a retail setting again, I’d be just as miserable. Whether I’m selling foot powder or wine, pumping gas or renting out movies, standing behind a register while fighting back the urge to sarcastically ask every customer “paper or plastic” while I sarcastically punch them in the throat for asking the same fucking question as the last 10 assholes just isn’t my thing.

Walking in the door rejected and dejected, we decided to look online for jobs. I wasn’t expecting to find much, because any jobs you find online are either going to be IT jobs (hahahahahahahahahahahaha IT jobs hahahahahahah in Winnipeg? hahahahahahahahah *gasp* hahahahahahaha) or factory jobs (I’m looking at you, Government of Canada job bank). Well surprise of surprises, I found a few IT jobs that I might actually be suited for. Needless to say I applied to them so fast that NASA might need to come up with a measurement faster than “Mach”.

You can also imagine the elation that swept over me when the very next day, I got calls from 2, count ‘em 2, different places. One turned out to be a dud where I’d be making $10/hour (same as what I was making at Sobey’s) operating a plotter (essentially a huge printer) but it would also be on the other side of the city. No thanks. The other one however? *pumps his arm in excitement* Doing support for a chemotherapy device sold to hospitals world wide. As if that wasn’t good enough, it’s downtown (good), and it’s going to be easy as hell (better).

Oh yeah, and the position pays $45,000/year to start. CHA-CHING!

Yesterday afternoon was my first interview which went extremely well. I met with the recruiter at a coffee shop called The Fyxx and we just talked about my background in IT, where I’d eventually like to go in my career, etc. All the usual things they ask you while they attempt to size you up. Apparently I impressed the pants off of her because barely two hours later, she called me to tell me that she had set up an interview with the actual company for Friday (today).

*cue Justin doing his happy dance in 5… 4… 3… 2… 1…*

Which brings us to today. All I need to do is charm an HR person and my potential boss this afternoon and I’ll have a new job that should hold me over until Ashleigh can finish moving into her new apartment and commence job hunting in Calgary. We’ve spent the last week painting the place, and I can’t wait until she’s all moved in, so that she can get her computer going and hit Monster, Workopolis, and all those other wonderful websites in the hopes that someone in Cowtown will want to give a Winnipeg woman a chance.

Anyone know of any businesses in Calgary that need a Marketing Coordinator?

It seems it’s been 3 months since my last entry. Many things have happened in 3 months and I think being the keeper of my history, you should be apprised of them. I think it’s only fair, that you are available to me whenever I want to reminisce about days past that I treat you with the same respect and use you whenever possible.

We left off where I was explaining how incredibly wonderful my flight home from Bermuda was. The flight from Toronto to Winnipeg was rather uneventful, ending with Ashley picking me up from the airport, and laughing at me for wanting to go straight to McDonald’s. What can I say; going 6 months without that greasy cardboard taste was like a lifetime.

I spent the first month of being home trying to find employment with any kind of office. Process development or just general support, just something to get me out of the house. During this search, I was contacted by a guy who works with TiVo in San Jose who had by chance come across another website I started with an ex-coworker a couple years ago (which is still up and running) and wanted me to go through their employee knowledgebase and streamline it. Unfortunately, this was over a month ago and I haven’t heard from him at all since those first few days, so I’m assuming that it’s dead in the water.

Since then, I’ve taken a position at a Sobey’s less than a 15 minute walk from my house, where I am a combination customer service clerk (I sell lottery tickets and cigarettes) and file maintenance admin (I am responsible for ensuring that the week’s price downloads from corporate are set up correctly, and I print out any new price tags and signs). If I was to say “I hate this job,” it would be like someone who just had both arms and legs ripped off saying that an aspirin would be fine. Call it an issue with pride, or whatever you like, but going from a near-$60K/year position where I was asked to come down to a (sub-)tropical island, to a position where I actually am forced to ask “would you like paper or plastic?” is just degrading.

Anyways, that brings us roughly to now, where the only other thing relatively important in my life is the girl that I’m seeing. Her name is Ashleigh (no, not Ashley), she’s the Marketing Co-ordinator at Investor’s Group, and (surprise of surprises) wants to get the hell out of Winnipeg and go to…..wait for it…..Calgary! Since we’ve only been seeing each other for a few weeks, we’re not exactly trying to build a family or anything, but I’ve been spending as much time as I can, trying to find her a job and an apartment out there. (Yes, you read that right: for the first time in my life, I’m not going to try and rush things, and we’re going to get our own places out there while we still get to know each other.) In terms of work, I have two standing job offers in Calgary at the moment (one for $65K/yr, the other for about $45K/yr), and if I wanted more money than that, I could always hit Monster.ca or something. For living arrangements, a friend of mine bought a house a few weeks before I left Calgary last time and has an empty room that I could rent, so I have everything for myself taken care of; it’s just a matter of getting Ashleigh ready.

Also, I’m currently suffering from tonsilitis. Which wouldn’t be so bad, except that it’s the second time in as many months that I’ve had it and I’m really wishing my stupid doctor would just recommend that I get the surgery so I could go back to leading a normal funny-voice-free life.