Wow, I can't believe I let this narrative stagnate for a whole year. Life is busy. And then it's not... or at least you think it might not be.
I was recently canned from my employer of 9 years because they're restructuring where the work is done. Old story, even for me. However, before my last day there, I and a number of teammates got a renewed lease on life, working for the company in a different product area. It's a good opportunity for us in a number of ways, so I'm still "there", but it's all new.
As part of moving to this new role, I'm also temporarily working in a different city, far from my family, friends, and bandmates. An opportunity to explore places, technologies and musical inspiration, and hopefully to spend a bit more time with family who live closer to my new temporary home than to my permanent one.
The new location is Montreal, which is somewhere I worked for more than a year a long long time ago, before I moved to Vancouver. As a fitting first dinner last evening, I had Montreal smoked meat, which was excellent. Montreal is an interesting, ethnicly diverse city, and I'm looking forward to lots of great meals.
I also hope I can find my way around the local music scene, as I also think of Montreal as vibrant in that area. And meanwhile, back in my "bachelor pad", I have a minimal setup for making music, and hope I can make it work well for me.
I've written previously about how I find business travel both frustrating and inspiring. I expect this experience will be no different, but am looking forward to the inspiring part... there's a LOT of possibilty there. For the rest... hopefully FaceTime will help keep family close.