Still Looking for the Great in the North... Friday, July 1

This time last year I was celebrating Canada Day here after 11 years of not being able to.  I was a visitor on vacation.  Today I celebrated Canada Day as a resident and it kind of hit me as I looked up at the sky by the harbour front.  I had commented that the sky in Canada is always blue but that the sky in Korea is always a shade of grey.  It's black at night.  No matter how dark the sky gets here in Canada though it's always a shade of blue.  I don't think I'll ever stop finding that so beautiful.

I'm a resident here in Canada.

I'm living here and have been for the past 11 months but what do I have to show for it?!  I know what I want to do but getting there has been so incredibly and painfully slow.  

Canada doesn't move at the rate of Korea.

Everything here seems to be supersized -- the land, the food portions, the trucks -- but it all also seems to move at a supersized snail's pace, slow motion.  

I gave myself a year to figure my stuff out but I honestly don't know if I have anything to show for it because I feel so far from it still.  It's one thing to not know what you want but it's a whole other thing to know what you want to do but be so restricted and held back.

What's holding me back, you ask.  Money and connections but I refuse to have money be what determines how my future opens up.  Connections, that's my biggest obstacle right now.  

I'm waiting for the photographer to get back to me.

I'm waiting for my product supplier to invite me out to his warehouse for samples.

I'm waiting for the web designer to put together a quote.

I'm waiting for the small business start-up crew to phone me back.

I'm waiting for the manager at a new local boxing club to agree to a meeting day/time.

And in the meantime I'm thinking about ditching EVERYONE I'm waiting on and do every and all tasks by myself -- take my own pictures, search out my own products, design my own website, ditch the help of the start-up crew, and find another location to set up home base.

"Canada is not Korea", I tell myself this all the time.  This has been the ongoing theme and struggle of my life back here in the Great White North.  Winter wasn't so white though and besides my friends here that are beyond fabulous, establishing myself here and launching my next business venture hasn't been so great.  Where's the Great in the Great White North?!