So, how's Ottawa?

A few people have asked how Ottawa's been. Surprisingly, it's been good.

I love Toronto and the city life and I think of it nostalgically. Moving home to the suburbs of Ottawa has been a complete change. The rhythm of life is different. There's an abundance of time, it almost feels wrong to have large blocks of time that verge on boredom.

The last time I had this much free time was my year in Korea, defined by entire weekends spent indoors from Friday afternoon until Monday morning. These were haven time weekends. In Toronto, I kept waiting for these free weekends to come around, so I could read, run, and disappear into solitude. These weekends never presented themselves. Something always came up, and it was always a fun something. In my two years of city living, I only ended up with a mere handful of solitary weekends, and they only happened if I consciously wrote 'hermit weekend' into my planner. 

In the city, the choices seem endless, coming at you on a treadmill. See friends? Go to a museum event? Check out a restaurant? Meet for drinks? There are more options than time available so everything becomes a choice. And it's easy to pick whatever is most appealing at that moment, at the expense of something longer term that you may want more. I wanted to write, but writing as an activity remains silent, it's not a reward that is as immediate, compelling, or persuasive as going out for drinks.

The past two years melted away. It was the end of a phase - a glorious time of spontaneous fun, of novelty, of making new friends and strengthening old friendships - and it was time for change. We go through life in phases, and what we want from each changes as we evolve. I imagine for most of us there comes a time when we want more, to do more, to work more, to accomplish more. It's hard to recognize the end of a phase and its message that it's time to move on.