The universal icon in the middle is the one

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...