Day to day living is what happens when you’ve been stationary long enough to feel the occasional, blissful twinge of boredom and the beautiful sameness of slipping into a routine. When we first moved here the routine kept changing because Shanghai is always changing. Now, however, we are familiar enough with our neighbourhood and the city that we can actually make plans.
Long, long ago when David and I first started dating we used to talk about The Future. He warned me back then that he wasn’t one for the white picket fence, but was more attracted to a gypsy rover sort of life. I felt the pieces of my future shifting a bit. What did I really want?
I grew up in a small town on Vancouver Island. The goal for most of my set was to Leave Town. Town only has a one-screen movie theatre. Shopping options were limited and cultural options felt limited, and then chance of one staying in town and marrying up seemed limited, and mostly, I think, so many of us need to use those late teenage years to spread our wings. My first year away from home was a time of great imagination & dreaming, which first allowed me to explore the ideas of how my future could look.
So, back to 2004 and the white picket fence. At this point in time we were both working in somewhat similar roles, namely at thrift stores. David’s was a non-profit and mine was a for-profit but there is a sort of thrift-store vibe among the young retail associates in Victoria. Many of us were modern hippies, or I guess better characterized as your general West Coast early millenials, living in cheap apartments and being sort of Bohemian and just having a good time the way one can with few bills, a decent amount of pocket money, and a city to explore. Dave and I used to take day trips, on foot, to the surrounding Gulf Islands and talk about the day we would backpack, or drive, around Canada, working here and there and seeing the country etc.
Grad School spurred us on the adventure but then as we got deeper into it and discovered that David had some sought after talent things had to shift yet again. It’s not every day that one gets a chance to move to England. And here we are in our early-to-mid-thirties and we’re doing the scholarly Bohemian gypsy rover thing, which is slightly more upscale than our original dreams, and involves hauling around a lot more books, but still involves rundown abodes and a strange mishmash of household possessions. A lot of our friends have this sort of settled adult style, whether they’re renting or owning, and I’m still thinking about whether or not I even want to bother buying curtains because will we bother packing them on our next international move.
After living this way for so long it’s hard to imagine living any other way. To be in the same place for more than three or four years? Shocking! The kids even take it as a matter of course that there will be a “next apartment” or a new country to explore. We had that brief, not brief enough, spell in Burnaby which was a really good view into what being settled with few choices would be like. Apparently I don’t mind big cities if they’re new but stick me in Toronto or Greater Vancouver and the misery just pours in. Living in a tiny apartment because the rents are too high is very different to living in a tiny apartment because you’re living abroad and you’d rather save on the rent to go and travel. I’m not saying that I never want to settle down but when we do, IF we do, I’m hoping that it will be on more comfortable terms.
(I say more comfortable terms but these are the material things I'm enjoying in our new place)
