Received the study permit admission letter (the ticket to Canada) yesterday with our returned passports and promptly booked myself a too-early-morning solo trip back to T.O. on the 29th. Jen and I will decide on a moving company pronto and I'll get the Canadian power-of-attorney drafted to bring along for a lease signing. Gladly being a responsible adult, doing what needs to be done.
I found myself looking at the expiration dates on food products at home yesterday (and on those that we brought home during last night's downpour) and thinking about where we'll be, how different it'll be in some ways, the percentage of people I've known that I may never see again, but most of whom I haven't seen in ages anyway. Not a bad thing, just evidence of my changed priorities.
("So how do you REALLY feel?")
And as if on cue, a carbon copy of my old Dodge van rolls through the parking lot as I think about getting together with old friends.
The last 18 months of work did take its toll on my perspective and my creative side, but was it the office environment, or the nature of the work itself? I look back on my work lives and see that so much of what I did - pretty much everything since 1999 - was just repetitive, no different in the main from stereotypical factory work, the tasks following an explicitly designed framework, where occasional chances to flex and refine critical thinking skills were always bucking up against the explicitly designed framework (due to industry constraints imposed upon my employers). I knew how good I had it in a work-control sense with PDW, but had no idea how hard it would be to enable and foster that same independent spirit at a real living wage. Over ten years! And only now does there seem to be a convergence of views I hold towards segments of society that have evolved, essentially, to where I've needed them to evolve.
In the past, it seems like I always had to have an answer, always had to justify my actions. That's probably the connecting thread with why I got so bent with Jen yesterday: so many of my life decisions have been second-guessed when they didn't lead to the promised land of traditional financial rewards train that I wasn't often trying to catch, as I insistently wanted to flex my creative side on my own terms and willingly paid the price for that. It's been great to align things to this point, though I'll soon be six-figures deep in red ink, as I've been able to fight off the contaminants of toxic opinions.
Truly, it's a blessing to be able to explain rather than be forced to justify.
Once again, Jen wins: to my astonishment, the Canadian Consulate approved my student visa application already, not even a week after the Express Mail package was received. She'll enter Canada with me as a visitor as my common-law spouse under Canadian non-immigrant visa provisions, and then we'll apply for the work permits straightaway.
Today, I was informed by my school to re-apply for the Stafford and Graduate PLUS loans, then was surprised to find that I wasn't able to go through the same process on the Sallie Mae website - they only have links to the Smart Option student loan. A quick Google search explained to me why that was the case:
Sallie Mae can't offer those loans anymore. They've been replaced by the U.S. government as a direct lender.
I should know better than to ask why the Sallie Mae rep didn't tell me this (because like any scumbag lending operation, they're only looking to get money in their own pockets, not to give people the best option for themselves when they themselves can no longer offer that best option) or why my school rep didn't tell me this (honestly I have no idea, other than that overwhelmed people often aren't able to cull forth the common sense of a simple answer, and I know 'cause I've been there, with that answer being it's a brand-new website called StudentLoans.gov, ya dummy! It's not Sallie Mae anymore!)
Added hilarity is that the first Google result brought up a Fox News article that touched on how the student loan overhaul was buried within the health care bill. (Maybe they're wrong on that, even; it is Fox News after all, but it's late and sourcing it really doesn't matter at this hour.)
So, now I apply for the same student loans that "were cancelled by my school on July 2nd" (screw you, you duplicitous Sallie Mae jackass) on a different website. And in the spirit of idiot-proofing, I'll let them know the website I used to apply for them. I could have avoided a wheelbarrow full of B.S. if I'd just been informed of the right way to go about it with the new process that just began on July 1st...but now's the time to celebrate the small victory, knock down that second aborted funding attempt, and scale the walls for the third attempt, which will hopefully be the charm.
Money may buy happiness for some, but it sure doesn't guarantee common sense for the rest of us.
So I re-applied for the king-size one-fits-all loan yesterday and print it out at Kinko's over by the U (since Jen sold some clothes to Everyday People) and printed out the new king-size loan application, only to be told today by the same financial aid person that I bugged out on via email yesterday that yes, York grad students will be able to obtain Stafford and Graduate PLUS loans, unlike what I had been told.
Imagine that, Sallie Mae was wrong! Imagine that.
Despite all of yesterday's post-nuclear efforts, I was unable to relax and went on auto-pilot for most of today after finding that out. I figure it's up to the school to distribute that anyway, and I'll find out if they'll simply re-instate the loans I applied for in May that were canceled, or if I have to do that yet again, as I'm not going to subject my credit to yet another hit with another application started and canceled. I'll just have to wait on what the Consulate now has, and hope that things work out (I almost wrote "hope that I don't get fucked over", but am trying very hard to alter my perspective and be more positive about what I can't control).
Since I can't count on the financial aid, I executed Plan A, which was to liquidate my last 401(k) for about $3000 which will cover the first/last month's rent on whatever place Jen and I get. That's right, yours truly now officially has no retirement funds whatsoever. But whatever... if Social Security hasn't been completely demolished in 25 years when I'm supposedly supposed to think about "retiring" then I'll be very surprised. This whole adventure is about trying to start fresh, make good, and make good money. And for all of my own planning and concern, I feel a lot better than I'd expect with more family members involved in this decision and process of mine, as I'm sure I'd be peppered with projected anxieties and worries about it all being so expensive, how far away I was moving from my family, and such a risk to take without a guaranteed return.
That, of course, is exactly the point. As far as I'm concerned, there are people who accept what is laid out before them and those who strive for something more intrinsic that requires something more drastic. There is no "right" time - I made up my mind and set my course. (One might say that I stubbornly maintain the idealism that I've been encouraged to compromise or abandon by various people and forces that have been in my life at one point or another.) It's only now that the process of getting to Canada seems more arduous than it was getting accepted into the program; in a couple of months I will be grateful for the time I had at this very moment to type this, deluged as I'll be with hundreds of pages of reading and analysis and classes and small group meetings.
And you know what? In two months I'll also be able to walk out my door and take in the Toronto International Film Festival. Or not,if I so choose. The new options are so vast and I'd be lying if I said that I had any real idea of what Jen and I will encounter to stretch ourselves and grow as people. Suffice to say, at the end of the day, I'm less tired than I am satisfied with where things are going, and each incremental goal reached is a big deal.
After deciding to apply for more loan funds through the Smart Option Student Loan Plan as a contingency against the move costs, car insurance and unplanned post-move expenses, I checked on the status of the Stafford and Graduate PLUS loans that I'd applied for back in early May. Imagine my shock when they were no longer showing up on the website, so I called Sallie Mae to see what was up. And what a what's up it was.
Turns out my school decided that with the changes that the Department of Ed put through, that they were no longer accepting Stafford and Graduate PLUS loans that I was told to apply for weeks earlier, and that the school had canceled those loan applications on July 2nd.
Without telling me.
For several hours I was mad enough to launch a nuclear warhead - just when the fuck were they going to tell me, when I'm utterly dependent on the loans to pull this off? I've been on the other side where applications (or, in this case, needed communications) just fall through the cracks, so it was also a reminder of how utterly overloaded I was at my previous job where there just weren't enough staff to handle it all. A staff member at the school let me know that the person who was nominally in charge has been away from the office for multiple stretches this year - saying in not so many words that there have been problems and likely not feeling great about the turn of events.
I was very lucky, then, to feel that the large sum of money initially applied for, when broken down further, seemed uncomfortably thin, and that I should try to secure that cushion, spendy though it was. Had I not done so, it probably wouldn't have been until early August when the Consulate wouldn't have been able to verify my source of funds, since I sent them now-canceled "credit-approved" loan applications. I went to Kinko's and spent more money than needed to full out a new SOSLP application for the whole nine yards, then print out the pages that I'll fax to the Consulate to supersede the original submission. Jen mentioned that this kind of b.s. is to be expected from Sallie Mae, and the guy on the phone just repeated his spiel calmly after I said "fuck" while exhaling. (Wasn't so calm with my message to the covering staff member at school, which though obscenity-free still resulted in some remorse, having been on the receiving end of countless calls like that in my professional career for something that landed in my lap that now became my problem to solve.)
I found all of this out today only twenty minutes before I met with the first of three moving company reps, whose estimates ranged from much less than expected ($2900) to about what I expected ($4200) but using markedly different weight counts. It's too much material to read and it's going to have to wait until tomorrow or Wednesday to decipher and digest, but it'll also come with some furniture upgrades to be acquired to pitch some of our junky/creaky/somewhat unstable items such as a sectional couch with a hideaway bed, a better computer desk to replace the particle board, and a bedside bookcase to replace the crummy Leaning-Tower one I have that was an Ikea cheapie and crumbled during some home maintenance. Paradoxically, I feel calmer about the financial aid snafu with new stuff on the mind - it's something I have some control over, unlike the visa decision, the financial aid (re-)decision and disbursement, and the eventual arrival of our stuff in Toronto that will be preceded by our sleeping on a yet-to-be-acquired air mattress.
Will be on the prowl for no-payments-until-X with my good U.S. credit, but until then, it's time to collapse into bed to begin my abbreviated, second-to-last workweek for some time.
Lots of good things happened this week. We got the visa photos taken on Tuesday after I got off of work, then finally got the visa applications mailed off to the Consulate in Detroit, where the Express Mail was received on Thursday. If it processes in the time frame that they indicated that should, then we should see our new student and dependent visas in our passports by August 5th or so. Celebrated that small victory at a great little spot with dinner and a foofoo drink with Jen and Emily, then called three moving companies a couple of days later and scheduled appointments to meet with them all throughout this coming Monday afternoon. By the end of next week, my school may have distributed my financial aid, so I can then really dive back into the apartment search - many places are looking for employment letters and credit checks (when I won't have the first and will have to take time to build the latter there, as my U.S. credit score isn't what they use). And in less than three hours, Jen and I will take the cats to the vet to get their overdue rabies shots so that we can present that paperwork at the U.S./Canada border next month.
Got paid yesterday, paid one of my credit card bills on time, and was reminded again of just how little we'll have to live on until that financial aid comes through, as I have to wait until the next paycheck comes to make my car payment that I'd otherwise be making today. As it is, I have to cash out my last 401(k) to come up with the first and last months' rent for a new place and hopefully have a little left over - funny how reading "The Big Short", where people earned and lost hundreds of millions of dollars, makes me feel more at ease about the continuing check-to-check existence that I have, especially since my team at work hasn't brought in as many loans and my commission took a beating with one bad customer survey for the funds I'll get later this month. How much money I may have lost for something that wasn't my fault isn't the point - the point is to keep where I've been and not be motivated or demotivated by it. I've always believed that the money will come when it needs to, and it always has, somehow.
I also feel liberated from having to hold in my secret around my coworkers, which for all of my usual forthrightness has been really hard to do. People have been excited about what I've explained to them about my plans for the immediate future and I can see the gears turning on their faces, which is inspiring, thinking about what they themselves might want to do differently. I've spent too much time in the mortgage complex and I've seen how a number of people screwed themselves by revealing too much about their plans for themselves, which is another sad way that the modern workplace keeps people isolated from one another. (At least, I sure felt like I isolated myself over the last four months.) And I felt more bummed and less triumphant than expected when I put in my three-week notice, as the managers really do their best with mentoring and communication, though the growing pains of the company are still there. (Even the head of the JV simply announced in an email some days ago that he was asked to head up a new JV for the parent company and will be doing so, which says a lot about the communication culture.) In my next work, hopefully I'll be able to find a place where the communication is more open, or I'll be in a position to initiate and guide overt changes.
My next work won't be in a cube or behind a desk, though - it'll be in classrooms and small group meetings, at coffee shops and on the Toronto subways, under trees in the shade on nice days before fall and winter come around. And I think about the high-rise home that we'll probably find (what with the innumerable buildings reaching into the sky there) and the power-of-attorney document that we'll draw up to Canadian standards so that I can sign for a lease for Jen when (as I'm expecting) I have to fly back there (with the trip adding another four-digit bill to a credit card, but whatever!) and meet with landlords and property managers in person to fill out applications.
The workers down the street are currently demolishing the LaSalle bridge over Interstate 94, which is kind of how I'm living my life right now: my usual way is going away, and I'm finding my way up another street, still familiar, but completely different in so many ways.
My fire is stoked, and the dominoes are finally starting to fall in the order that they need to. Here we go, ever so slow...
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