Starting All Over Again: Rejection and Planning Again

I haven’t updated my blog for a while. And when I disappear (from the blog) for that long, usually something is up. This time is no different

I want to move abroad, specifically to Vancouver, Canada. And no, it’s not because I’m an American and I’m running because of a scary but possible Donald Trump presidency. Although I’m scared of Donald winning, I have more pressing issues to deal with.

In between juggling writing assignments and editing my fiction, I thought I at least knew where my life was headed. I applied to a good master’s program in Vancouver at a school I could afford. They didn’t specify a reason for their rejection.

Now, I’m used to rejection. I get rejected as a writer. I move on and write pieces on how to deal with it because for the most time, it’s easy to move on.

But this time, I let it get it to me. It created a lot of questions. I always meant what I said about plans B,C,D and all the way to the Z in case plan A failed, but this time it took a while to get back to work:

I wasn’t sure where to start, and to add more confusion to overwhelm:

• I had to stop working with several ongoing clients. (Either the projects ended, or their demands changed significantly). My income took a loss.
• I caught a cold, which often can trigger a depressed state (why this happens is the subject of another personal essay entirely).
• The winter kept bringing on highly unstable weather, which kept triggering my colds and affecting my social life,
• And there’s a constant new tragedy in the world that affects you one way or the other.

I’ve been wanting to leave for a long time, but I’ve been adamant that not just any place will do. I want better conditions and not worse. I want to speak the language of the country, or at least know something about the culture & language . The countries I want to move to aren’t that thrilled to have freelance writers with unimpressive bank accounts, which ironically gets emptier with all the things one might have to do to deal with visa procedures.

The bank account does suffer from the feast or famine syndrome because I refuse to write about things I am not interested in, and I also have three separate fiction projects I’m trying to get off the ground.

But I’m back, and I’ll hopefully have a great April. March wasn’t kind.

How have you been?