It’s March!

February was a whirlwind month for me: from being unemployed to employed; from being a night owl to being an early bird, and going into office every other day… man what a change! It’s true that new habits form within 20+ days if you stick with it enough.

First off, super grateful to be employed again, but I was super peeved with the initial job offer and the reasoning behind it. I had a lot of pent up frustration from being snowed-in for three weeks, and I had no outlet for all my emotions and energy.

To top things off, I barely got any new hire “honeymoon” period since I’m just diving right into it. This is why I negotiated hard for a higher starting salary cause I knew this was happening. They hired me for the same exact reason and just plain annoyed that they low-balled me. But, no fret, patience does it. I’m going to use it to leverage a raise come my quarterly check-in. I’m getting all the money I can get and I’m not shy about it.

We’ve also starting the ball rolling with our Permanent Residency journey in Canada. I must say I wished we have gotten more serious about it as soon as we landed in Canada, but in hindsight, we really did have other more urgent issues to deal with. The immigration landscape has changed quite a bit since we first arrived in Canada slightly more than two years ago. Like everywhere else, the sooner we understand that PR pathways are a privilege and not a right , the sooner we can accept the current reality. Governments do what they need and what they will in the country’s interests, and as immigrants and PR hopefuls, we’ll just have to play their game.

I’ve formally entered the Express Entry pool yesterday, and we are hoping for the best. There’s nothing else we can do in the short term to boost our points except for staying in my current job until August, and maybe pick up French…? The immigration policies and landscape are constantly changing so we’d just need to hang tight. If Canadian PR is not meant to be, then it’s not. That’s what contingency plans are for, although I’d have to admit I’d really like for us to continue to live in Canada and not uproot ourselves again.

I’m older now and less keen on new adventures and what not; not saying I’m adverse to change, it’s just more mentally exhausting than before.

That said, we still got a while left in Canada so we are planning to make full use of it. Still need to plan that road trip to the Canadian Rockies to mark it off our bucket list.