Kevin's Research Blog

Reflection: Where would I live?

Another post not quite related to development or anything about technology, but a rather interesting topic that I'd like to write about today nonetheless.

Calgary Just Sorta Happened

Next to Winnipeg, I lived in Calgary for a fair portion of my adult life. I lived in Calgary for just over a decade, about 6 years, if I count all of Alberta, then I resided in that Canadian province for 7 years.

I first moved to Medicine Hat, Alberta through a now ex-friend I met at a bar during karaoke in Winnipeg, Manitoba when I was in my early 20s. Not the best place to make a new friend, but this is where I ended up making several of my then friends of the time. Anyways, he relocated to Medicine Hat in around 2014, and in the summer of that year, he wanted me to move there with him to split the rent. At first I was really hesitant, as I was just getting my life started in Winnipeg. The business I was running was starting to finally become successful, and was gaining new clients and doing great work. I also began dating someone, and had some of the best roommates I've ever had, one of them also ran their own business through making her own music. Life felt almost perfect, until this friend essentially kept pestering me to move over with him to Medicine Hat, and I eventually caved, and I wish I just stood my ground at the time...

In Medicine Hat I found it extremely difficult to make any new friends, and a result I often found myself at the pub just across the street drinking my days away and getting more lonely and depressed by the day. My friend that moved me there didn't have much time after he was done work, most days, he'd just go right to bed right after work, and we wouldn't socialize much. Eventually my depression got the best of my, and I sort of snapped one night while I was drunk, and was taken to the nearby hospital to stay there for several days to recover. Once I was discharged, I was homeless in Medicine Hat.

My first priority in this situation was of course to find housing, and they have a housing society there which I signed up for. In the meantime, they had a decent homeless shelter through the Salvation Army, and even had a homeless cafe, where homeless residents can have some free meals, and free coffee in the morning. It was a rather nice homeless community in late 2014. I eventually got a place to stay as someone's roommate for December, and began applying for jobs everywhere around town, but got no job... As a result of essentially not being able to pay rent for the following month, as the housing society could only pay for me to stay there for one month, I had to make a tough choice... Should I try to relocate to Calgary for work? I spoke with the counselor I was seeing at this time, and they agreed that it would probably be best, and was able to secure some funds from the government for a one-way trip to Calgary.

I was homeless in Calgary for about a week, I refused to stay at their shelters there, as they were rather unpleasant, and I was very sheltered at this point, especially from the sort of stuff going on in those places. I tried to sign-up for a bed at their local Salvation Army which might have been safer, but it was full. So, I ended up roughing it on a park bench in the cold nights of January 2015 until an ad I placed onto Kijiji was responded to. They were nice enough to let me stay with them for free until I managed to make some income, well, it wasn't exactly free, I had to pay for the rent once I was able to make that income. I went down to the Alberta Works, which is like a welfare program, but you are expected to find work ASAP, but they assist with many work-related things, such as steel-toe boots for work that required it. Alongside applying to various I.T. jobs I thought I could get, and going to recruiting companies, I did a few temporary jobs around the city to make ends meet.

I eventually got an interview for my very first DevOps Engineer position, but back in 2015, it was simply called a Release and Development Manager. I did the interview, and they seemed very impressed, but due to the job being in the financial industry, it still took several weeks, almost a few days before the end of the month before I was actually hired. This ended up being the best job I've currently had in my entire life as of this writing. I was originally on a 3 month contract, but since I rebuilt their build system in their Jenkins program to improve the build times to an extreme with my excellent Python skills at the time, they bought out my contract and took me on a full-time employee. I held this job for about 6 years I think it was, but I could be overestimating it, I don't have my Resume next to me to check the exact dates.

Work kept me in Calgary. While Calgary is a very nice city overall, with a lot to see and do, it was never on my list of cities that I saw myself living in for the rest of my life. However, since it was the city where I had my first successful job in I.T. really, I decided to stay and keep applying as the years went by. Unfortunately, during my last year there, I was living entirely off of my savings I made from my previous unsuccessful job, which obviously led to depression, isolation, and feelings of uselessness. Eventually, I ended up leaving Calgary to temporarily move back to my home city of Winnipeg, where originally I was hoping to reconnect with family... Never hold on to hope, as I did here. Least to say, I was unable to reconnect with family, and they just abandoned me at the local homeless shelter in Winnipeg to fend for myself. This was a bit of a dark period for me, as I got jumped one night trying to stay on the streets and ended up staying in a hospital for about 6 days to fully recover. After leaving the hospital, a couple days after, I ended up meeting this guy who rented me a room in his house. Unfortunately the conditions were not very good for me, with a ton of dishes in the sink, and a dog which wasn't yet house trained. This led to a fair amount of bugs everywhere, including in my food at times, which led me to lose quite a bit of weight, and spiral into another depression...

Vancouver, one beautiful city

I think if I ever had a choice to live anywhere in Canada, it would probably be in Vancouver, why? Well, firstly, a lot of what Vancouver stands for, are the values I also believe in. This is also what made living in Calgary a tad difficult at times, due to the politics. You see, I do care about the environment, and yes, Climate Change. Vancouver is a city which I believe also shares those similar values, and I'd rather live somewhere which I can align with the people whom also live there. Calgary was all about the oil, with not much regard for the environment. The NDP, a center political party made it into office for a brief moment and stood for what I believed in, but that didn't last very long, in the next provincial election, the UCP came back into power and reverted a lot of the environmental progress which the NDP did... So yeah...

In term of employment and job opportunities here in Vancouver, where I have now relocated to, I should be-able find work in one of the following:

I personally want to work at a job which align with my personal values, and I do feel that in the Vancouver area, I should be-able to find that more than anywhere else in Canada.

I normally struggle to make new friends, but perhaps before I was young and looking for friends in the wrong places(bars), or even work. Perhaps here in Vancouver, I can finally make those lifelong friends I've been always looking for. Just being out and about in the city so far, I feel that once my anxiety goes down and I find a good place to meet like-minded people, that I will find a lot in common with a lot of the people here, and should be-able to start building up a good friend circle in time.

#thoughts