In Bloom (Nantes, 2009)

When I showed up at work to pick up my last pay check, after com­ing back from South Amer­ica, most of my co-workers stared at me, slightly bewildered:

– You look… different.

My boss even told me that “I looked health­ier and hap­pier than every­body even though I had just spent a few months trav­el­ing in third world coun­tries”.

Sure, it might have been because I was still tanned. But I’m not any­more and yet, peo­ple keep on com­ment­ing on how happy I look.

I had time to think. A lot of time, if you con­sider we bused 13,000 km in total. I opened my eyes, I looked around me, I went wher­ever I wanted to go. We had ups and downs — it’s not like we were doing an all-inclusive trip. Hell, most of time, the only things included were mos­qui­toes and skip­ping meals. But we don’t travel to relax. We travel to see and expe­ri­ence the world.

When I left last Decem­ber, I was tired: tired of my job, tired of Ottawa and tired of peo­ple in gen­eral. I had been work­ing full-time for four years, since I grad­u­ated from uni­ver­sity in 2005. And before 2005, I had been study­ing full-time for four years, basi­cally since I grad­u­ated from high school. I can’t com­plain since we trav­eled a lot in between, but still — this doesn’t leave a lot of time to think.

So as we were trav­el­ing, I was think­ing of my… my future. Oh, what a grown-up word!

I real­ized that even if I loved teach­ing, I just didn’t want to teach full time any­more. Teach­ing thirty of forty hours a week is crazy. But, since we are paid by the hour, it’s the only way to make an very aver­age salary. So our classes are sched­uled back to back and we are exhausted by the end of the week. In the worse case sce­nario, we don’t have any patience left, and no inter­est either since the work is quite repet­i­tive (“je suis”, “tu es”, any­one, anyone?).

Before I left, I started think­ing of another career. But I was just clue­less. Should I aim for a career in the fed­eral gov­ern­ment, some­thing every­body in Ottawa dream of because it’s steady and well-paid? Should I go back to uni­ver­sity? My French uni­ver­sity degrees usu­ally leave all the poten­tial employ­ers per­plex and con­fused (duh, I stud­ied Chi­nese lan­guage and civ­i­liza­tion, and my four years degree doesn’t exist any­more thanks to a reform!). Deep down my main prob­lem was that I wasn’t sure what I would like to do. And even though I learn fast, I wasn’t really trained for any­thing spe­cific, other than speak­ing for­eign lan­guages and talk­ing about “farm­ers and com­mu­nists dur­ing the Chi­nese rev­o­lu­tion”.

I got most of my answers when sit­ting in long dis­tance buses in Latin Amer­ica. No, I didn’t feel like work­ing in a small cubi­cle for the gov­ern­ment, just because it was well-paid and steady. I wanted to do what I loved.

Writ­ing. Tak­ing Pic­tures. Cre­at­ing. See­ing the world. Talk­ing to peo­ple. Learn­ing from the world.

Yeah, yeah, call me a dreamer.

As I have already men­tioned, my father is an artist. Let me break the news gen­tly: when you are a full time artist, you are not rich. In fact, you don’t even think about money. You just cre­ate, for­get to eat and hope for the best. As my mother would say, you don’t choose to be an artist, you just are… and she would know, being an artist her­self and a researcher.

Don’t get me wrong, my par­ents are not poor. But they aren’t rich either and I think their banker hate them. Most of the cut­lery they have at home was stolen from the uni­ver­sity refec­tory when they were both study­ing arts, just to give you an exam­ple. It’s also prob­a­bly a good thing they are not very mate­ri­al­is­tic because they don’t own much. But they are rel­a­tively happy and sat­is­fied with what they achieved.

I had sworn that I would be dif­fer­ent (don’t we all be dif­fer­ent from our par­ents, no mat­ter how much we love them?). I would be down-to-earth, real­is­tic and prac­ti­cal. Yeah, right.

My genes have caught up with me. I just want to cre­ate beau­ti­ful stuffs, write about the world and take pic­tures. Oh, I know I have a lot to learn… but I came to this con­clu­sion. I want to do what makes me happy. Doesn’t mean I will live like a dreamer. But I will have my eyes wide open to every oppor­tu­nity. I’m still teach­ing but only part-time, so that I am more relaxed. I can’t afford full-times stud­ies now but I signed up for a class at the Uni­ver­sity of Ottawa this sum­mer. I’m tak­ing time to update my resume, to meet new peo­ple and con­sider oppor­tu­ni­ties. Lit­tle by lit­tle, I hope to do more things I love.

I sound like a hip­pie, yet so far, I’m hap­pier.

Maybe it’s just the post-traveling with­drawal. Or maybe I’m just a lit­tle bit closer to find what I really like. Any­way, these long dis­tance bus rides do won­der — you should try.

Related arti­cles:

1. Change A Life
2. Sum­mer In The City
3. The Office
4. Us And Them
5. The Inter­views From Hell