In the Land of Trucks and Oil

Alright, I promise these hiatuses won’t keep happening. My first month long hiatus was an actual executive decision to focus as best I could on school. Thoough, I’ll be honest with you, it was less of a decision and more of a “read Ulysses or else” kind of deal. Now school seems like a lifetime away and here I am, still not posting. Over the last couple months I’ve discovered that I am a very task-orientated person. I use this phrase because it is a lot more forgiving than “sucks at multi-tasking”. For the last couple months my mind has essentially looked like this:

• Must survive final essays
• Must get through exams
• Must figure out surgery
• Must have surgery
• Must celebrate/recover from surgery
• Must get to Grande Prairie
• Must figure out why I moved to Grande Prairie
• Must figure out class time schedule
• Must find job

Unfortunately for everyone else in my life, while one of those factors is occupying my brain, I struggle with addressing other issues/people as well. I beg you to bear with me.

My life is in a strange place right now. And by “strange place” I mean Grande Prairie. As I sit here writing I am staring out the window absolutely dumbfounded by the snow falling from the sky on June 3^rd. I know, I know, I really shouldn’t be too surprised, but here I am, surprised regardless. I moved to GP for a lot of reasons:

• To get to know my new step-family better
• To have time to work on my writing
• To make a lot of money at a well-paying Nothern job
• To attend classes for free at GPRC. 

All very good reasons, in my opinion. Currently, some of those things are going better than others, but I’m still optimistic.

As my friend who lived up here for the past month and I reflected, we noticed that living in GP doesn’t really feel real. It’s kind of like the surreal experience I had living in Spain, minus the gorgeous landscape, unique culture, interesting language, and endless adventures. Actually, living in GP does often feel like living in a different culture except instead of Spanish villagers and rolling hillsides you have rednecks and their trucks. Ok, I’m being a little harsh, though to be honest I am scared of wearing anything outside that is even remotely hipster for fear of the consequences. To be fair though, Grande Prairie is actually a very pretty town and it is doing much better than the ground-level expectations I had of it at the beginning.

As I keep my eyes peeled for a job I have a lot of time to work on past projects, which is really really good. Hopefully you will be able to see the fruits of those labours sooner rather than later. For now I just needed to post to get the ball rolling again. Here is a great music video and my favourite song right now to make up for this seemingly meatless entry.

PS: After re-watching the music video, I couldn’t help but note the strong redneck tendencies it portrays. Please do not think that this means that I am slowly becoming a redneck. I’m not. I have no intention of purchasing a gun, wearing a dear-head backpack, or running headlong into people to make them explode. I promise. It’s just a really good song by a really good band.