By now, I shared my thoughts which chronicled the one year anniversary of leaving Calgary and moving to Berlin. I also chronicled a brief update of the first few weeks in this exciting new city. But what I haven’t talked (to myself) about yet is the why. Why did we move from Berlin? How did we end up in Toronto? Why didn’t we return back to Calgary? What are we even doing here?
"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far it is possible to go."-- T.S. Eliot
I feel like I have talked this to death, but we have recently discovered that we are risk-takers. My wife and I are scared of the mundane and of routine, and we are always building something - multiple things in fact - and thinking one, two, and five years ahead. And when we first started dating, our five years ahead was pretty standard: graduate from university, buy a home, get a luxury car, have a beautiful wedding. But as we ignited a passion and creativity and inspiration in each other, that five year plan morphed to exploring new countries, trying new foods, building digital landscapes, and employing ourselves.
In the pursuit of creating content and living our dream of working together, everyday, we made the decision (probably a few months before the actual move) to relocate to a more familiar landscape. Although in essence, being in German (the birthplace + home country of my beautiful wife) was exhilarating, we quickly realized that the home and life (and corresponding) lifestyle that we had worked so hard to build was in Canada. And opportunities kept knocking down, and after many discussions, lists, and spreadsheets, the decision was made for us to take those one-way flights - again - and call a new city in our old country home.
Toronto, thus far, has been a microcosm of activity and wonder. A lot of hard work and coordination had a play in launching us the way it did; my parents were in Toronto the same weekend we landed, and picked us up from the airport and spend time with us for a few days. We had not caught up since Scotland for Christmas, so that was a special + well coordinated time. From there, we settled into our AirBnB for the month of May while both Monika and I got re-acquainted with Canadian climate, food, time zone and the (very friendly!!) people. Since then, we have moved into our new home in downtown, and are in the full swing of living our dreams.
To answer the question that most of you are probably asking: why did you move? The answer is a simple question: why not? Or how about these answers: because life is short, because the world is getting smaller, because I always joked about moving to Toronto, because Canada is an amazing country and because I have literally never been more proud to be Canadian. Also, just in time to celebrate this nation’s 150th birthday. So there’s that.
In short, I hope you take away from this that you never have to explain yourself to others. Do you, ask forgiveness later. Or don’t.
