On a Serious Note: West Coast Living.

I can't sleep. It is cold, and I swear my bones are aching from the wet weather. I have basically lived in Vancouver my entire life, but somehow the dampness still manages to make even the born-and-raised west coast resident frustrated.

I can't imagine living anywhere else though. Life on the west coast is one of those things that you hate, but you love to hate it. We have so many amazing things here, which come at a cost of course, but it's sometimes a little too much and not enough all at the same time.

If you have never been to the beautiful city I am so priviledged to reside in (Vancouver, BC) I beg you to travel here and experience all that our wonderful city and province have to offer. The pacific north west is really unlike any other place you can go to, and in Vancouver we really have it all.

.... and yet, I am bored of it. I love to live here, but I want to leave so badly. I search the internet for vacations to hot, sunny places because I am so tired of the foggy, the cloudy, the rainy... the sunless days. I live in a place where it feels like it is raining 8 months of the year (even if it doesn't), and even on the beautiful winter days that we get occasionally, they are always forgotten rather quickly as they never seem to last as long as you hope they would.

Unfortunately, I have adopted a career that does not give me a lot of flexibility to explore the world the way I wish I could. I love doing hair, it has consumed my life in every amazing way I could want - but with a client based career comes responsibility to always be there when people need you. Unless I win the lottery, I will never be able to get away for extended periods of time to enjoy the beautiful world we live in.

I do not regret my choices to be young and rooted in a career, and yet I wish sometimes I had debts from experiences in foreign lands rather than from a half-assed attempt at a useless degree and scissors and shoes full of hair. I live vicariously through my clients who tell me of exotic places - and I am nothing but envious of their opportunities to leave this place I call home and see somewhere else.

But I have nothing but time. I am only 21 living in what I know is one of the most amazing places on earth. I dream of being imersed in the history of Europe.. the history of my ancestors, and yet I haven't seen everything my own homeland has to offer. There is so much left to see, and so much left to do in my own back yard, but none of it excites me... and that makes me sad. I need to get away to appreciate all that I am surrounded by... but I know a few days under the sun won't give me what I'm looking for. I don't even know what I'm looking for.

I am tired of this damn rain.

I am tired of being in Vancouver.

I never want to leave.

K.