Dinner last night for our friend who is leaving in 10 days back to Tokyo. Man, I can't believe how upset I am about it. We are going to miss her so much, especially Masa who talks to her almost every day. We saw some people we've not seen in several months, reminisced, laughed, and drank wine. A usual event, but tinged with nostalgia, knowing that it was most likely the last time. Damn. As we left the apartment, the snow was coming down in gusts, cars sliding up and down Sherbrooke. In the taxi going home, it struck me how grounded and rooted we are here, despite one of our closest friends leaving. We could go to Japan for a while, take a leave of absence from work, get out of Quebec for a few months. But we'd always come back here. Though I love Tokyo (and would love to spend some time there in the next few years), it's not our home anymore. It's far away. I don't even think Masa would want to move back if we had the chance (though I could be wrong about that), despite the fact that it's where he's from. Maybe Yuko being back would make it more appealing but Tokyo is...well...it's hard to imagine having the same quality of life there that we have here.
We are happy for our friend who has found a great job. And losing friends is a part of life. But we're sad...
Hoping that things at work calm down a little after last week when we had a big deadline. It'll still be busy, naturally, until the Festival in April, but hopefully things will get a bit more manageable now. It's nearly too much and working all weekend doesn't help. Had a few super tense days last week with fussy writers and pushy editors and academics with no social skills. But I got through them. And made the deadline. And a few new projects for later this year and early next are kind of exciting.
Been reading the last of Stieg Larsson's Millenium, The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest which I find tedious and impossible. He really is not a good writer, in most ways, despite his books being popular. Yes, the first two were entertaining but his characters are all so flat and predictable, even Lisbeth Salander. And this third one is full of all this Swedish government intrigue that is more yawn-inducing than intriguing. I don't care about 70s Swedish cold war politics and some obscure conspiracy that involved no one outside Sweden. I'm halfway through the book now and reading it now is starting to feel like work. Not a good sign.
So C&I are off to South America this week for 7 weeks. With a 6 month old baby. I admire them. And how fun. They have this great trip planned, time away during this cold (there is so much snow out there right now), a chance to do something new. And I don't see us doing anything like that in the near future. Sigh. It's OK. I would like to go back to Argentina but now my focus seems to be my job and for a few years, that's OK, especially if it'll open other doors for me down the road. I'm not terribly ambitious but I do have a specific vision for the work I want to be doing in five years (and, more importantly, the fact that I don't want my job to be my life as it is right now). It's funny because for all of my 20s and most of my 30s, traveling was a major focus of my life and interests. And now it's not. I still love to travel and there are still places I really want to go. But I have other concerns now and I feel strongly that traveling will pop back up onto my radar in a few years. Now my focus is my career. Meh. I hate typing that sentence because it makes me seem all smarmy and obsessed with money. And that's not it at all. But I do want to have a certain level of financial security and have a job that I enjoy and where I feel valued. Ideally, it'll be working from home but doing something that is not so mind-numbing as what I was doing before. Anyway, we'll see. In the meantime, with Yuko leaving, C&I in Argentina and Chile for the next two months, 70% of our social life is now gone!
Good thing I am busy with work until May...
