Now what?

People : ‘So what are you going to do?  How long are you going to be off work?  What are you doing with you time?

Me: ‘Um I don’t know, and you know that question is off limits.  I don’t know, and it’s also a question that is off limits.  And I’m doing a bit of everything, trying to anyway.’

People: ‘What does everything mean?’

Me: ‘Everything means everything, reading more, going to fortune tellers, mad drunken orgies and vegan recipes.’

So now what?  It’s been great being home, more so than I would have thought, I always wondered if I would ‘fit in’ again in Montreal, if I could find happiness here, but being around my friends, my little Ewok, my mom and her cooking, it’s been great, nothing else just great in the end…. So why do I want to leave?  Well, it’s hard to explain, but there’s something about being home, especially in my old room at my mom’s which makes time extremely…. Extremely inefficient and as we all know I can’t accept that, and not to mention that I feel like I’m 20 again and on occasion have nightmares that I overslept the day of my Thermodynamics final or studied for Mech Eng instead of thermo…

There are some things I really want to do and ‘get done’ during this time off (thermodynamics not being one of them right now) and if I’m honest with myself I can’t do them from home.  I need to go to a place where I am proverbially free, free from the thoughts that occupy my mind in such a familiar surrounding, free from what people expect of me and most of all free from what I expect of me.

So, the question is where to go to get this freedom and inspiration?  Taking into certain financial limitations (Norway and Switzerland as you may have guessed are out of the question… and yes I’m lucky to be able to do this, I know very lucky), distance, weather, the price of alcohol….  Do I go back to somewhere I know?  Do I try somewhere new?  It’s a little like going to your favourite restaurant and staring at the menu thinking to yourself I really really want the tortelli al tartufo but I always have that!   I haven’t been here in a while and I know it’s sooo good….. but if I never try anything else I’ll never know what else is good.

Then of course with going back to somewhere you’ve already been to, lies the underlined expectations.  What if the chef makes the tortelli differently?  What if the tartufo crop just wasn’t good lately? And horror of all horrors what if it’s different chef?.........The last time I had the tortelli, it was perfect, but the last time ‘I’ was in a different place in my life, the people I met were in a different place, I was a ‘virgin’ to everything there, what if it’s not the same? What if going back will ruin the memory of the last time I was here and leave a sour taste in my mouth like tartufo gone bad?

Then somewhere new, what if I don’t like it?  What I if I don’t find my mojo?  What if I order the pene al arrabbiata but all I can think of while I’m eating is the tortelli al tartufo and I compensate with way too much wine?  Making my time there just as inefficient as if I had stayed home?  Am I overthinking this?  It’s so not like me to overthink something……

After much careful thought and consideration, weighing pros and cons, drawing a Gauss distribution of the potential deviation from my desired outcome (yes yes Nerd) I decided to once again have the tortelli al tartufo (with an little extra wine just in case).

So Buenos Aires, I know we’ve had our ups and downs, but I’m coming back for us to give it another go and see where it takes us (and if anything I’ll compensate with a lot of wine).

A little bit of home and what I've been doing

And what I'm going to do