Tag: art

Cleaning: Boxes of misc. need to be sorted, tidied, reintegrated into my room.
Driving: Signed up for Young Drivers of Canada classes, Oct 13th – Nov 8th.
Education: Social Services may pay for a First Aid certificate, but not school. Need to research student loans.
Employment: Still on welfare. Still applying to everything possible. No recent job prospects or call-backs, no upcoming interviews.
Finances: Income = rent minus $25. Immediate Debt = $9000. Approx. complete and total debt = $27,500.
Health: Degloved toe is almost better, with the possibility it may not even scar. Need new contacts.
Photography: Continuing to slowly finish Foxtongue.com, update Etsy store, Thread of Grace.
Repairs: All hard-drives are with Tony, being backed up. Coat rack still broken.
Taxes: Need to have an accountant double-check my paperwork.

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Tony and I have reached a new place in our relationship. Gone are the stressful plans to move me down there, fighting the system for permits, trying to game immigration. Instead he’s decided to start looking into moving back to Canada, the country that birthed him, until I can find a way to sharpen my skills to the point when I can claim a job in the United States. Of all the options available to us to live together, it seems the easiest way. Microsoft has appropriate work for him here and David and I are willing to shuffle everything required to make him fit. It’s been a rough direction for me, as it feels like defeat, like I’m giving in to this horrible city, but I’m trying to remain optimistic. No matter how much I hate it here, wherever we’re together is automagically a better place, so already I’ve been making a list of what furniture will need to go, as well as what I’ll need to forge myself a border-crossing future.

To start, I’ve been researching available classes, the sort that would give me a foundation of skills upon which to build an actual career. Painfully, the only one that I’ve found that teaches precisely what I want to learn is a year long VanArts course with the currently insurmountable price-tag of about $35,000 once basic living expenses are added in. $35,000 is a terrible lot of money, especially while unemployed. If I had that kind of dosh sitting in a bank account, I could easily put a down payment on a cute little house in Seattle and be done with it. Alternatives, however, are tricky to come by, as the only local school/course that’s better costs the same plus the expense of moving to the Comox Valley, which is even more beyond my means. (Unless I attempt to live with my not-actually-aunt who wants me to have her baby.) So the next step is looking into student loans and what sort of financing is available, as well as attempting, somehow, to teach myself some of the skills required, even though I don’t have those resources either. Yes, this last week has been full of terror, why do you ask?

Tomorrow I’m attending an information session for the tuition-free BCIT Business Skills Training Program, with intent to enroll. In a perfect world, it will help everything fall in line. Training that leads to a job that leads to enough money to pay for school that leads to a better job that pays enough for me to leave Vancouver. Talk about a happy ending.