Ok, so I’m ‘home’ now. After my last post I spent a month bouncing around the United States, couch surfing as I visited fellow racers and attended our squad leader’s wedding (yay Molly!), which was amazing. Chicago is one of my all time favourite cities, and camping in Texas in August, while quite warm, holds nothing to Mozambique, so to everyone’s surprise I was fairly comfortable in my tent. I even survived a good thunder storm that tried to blow my tent over with me in it. Fun times.
Now that I’m back in Canada I continue to couch surf, but mostly in one house instead of many, staying in one bed one night, a couch the next, depending on who isn’t home for the night. I emptied out my backpack for the first time in a year, and then proceded to empty out every box I had in storage and give away/sell what I could in an attempt to downsize for my move to Colorado. Some moments have been like Christmas, discovering things I forgot I had and giving them away, while others have been a little emotional, like throwing away a shirt I’d been wearing all year. (For my WR family, yeah, it was the yellow one with the dinosaur. It was showing a couple holes. *sniff*) I actually stood over the garbage can for a good minute just holding it, not wanting to do it, arguing with myself internally – ‘It’s just a shirt,’ ‘It’s more than that and you know it,’ ‘No, it’s just a shirt, which you happened to wear for a third of this last year.’ “Exactly!’ ‘What’re you gonna do, keep it in a drawer forever?’ ‘Maybe I’ll hang it on the wall.’ ‘What, frame a t-shirt?’ ‘What’s wrong with that?’ ‘Don’t be an idiot.’ ‘Don’t call me an idiot, idiot…’ It really felt like tossing out a part of this year, cutting off a part of me that can’t come back. Kinda weird. I did it, but I couldn’t go through any more stuff for 20 minutes or so and needed ice cream.
I did a get together for supporters (some of you were there!), and managed to just talk for two hours straight. I answered questions, showed pictures, told stories, nearly cried once or twice, and people were genuinely interested and really enjoyed themselves. They told me I inspired them (and they meant it). Never know how to take that. Then, the kicker, after I finished (how did I talk for 2 hours?!) I started thinking of the other 50,000 things I could’ve said. It made me realize just how much happened this year – and yet, a lot of times, I’ll just go blank when someone asks for a story. I usually blame it on there being too many stories and I just can’t filter them, but really it’s just a dysfunctional brain that only comes up with such things when I’d like it to shut up so I can sleep.
The rest of my time has been spent trying to make heads or tails of the US Visa application process. And here’s what I’ve come up with: *whimper*. Actually, seriously, please be praying about this. Like, a lot. Basically, with my official experience and training, I’m about the longest shot for being given a visa, slightly above known terrorist. There are too many people in the film business already (for which there seems to be very little need in the CO Springs area anyway), and all my other experience isn’t specialized enough and would be ‘taking jobs away from Americans.’ Everything else is falling into perfect place for me to move there though – I was offered a free place to move in to until I could afford to start paying, transportation down there for me, my motorcycle, and my stuff, as well as two different job offers from people willing to go through the application process with me, even though it is a long shot for actual approval. So I’m not backing down and plan to just take the long shot until God shows me a different plan or makes this one work. You guys have prayed me through this whole amazing year, so if you’d pray me to Colorado now too that would be sweet 🙂
I’ll post those slide shows soon too, for your viewing pleasure.
