{"id":705,"date":"2011-06-26T05:00:22","date_gmt":"2011-06-26T05:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mbear.ca\/?p=705"},"modified":"2017-05-31T02:54:54","modified_gmt":"2017-05-31T02:54:54","slug":"705","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mbear.ca\/?p=705","title":{"rendered":"Endings & Beginnings"},"content":{"rendered":"

We went for a walk on the beach today. \u00a0Chesterman Beach in Tofino, BC. \u00a0It\u2019s been ours for the last three years.\u00a0 \u00a0Only five more sleeps until we leave for a new adventure.\u00a0 Five more walks on this astonishing beach.\u00a0 How can I leave this place?<\/i><\/em><\/p>\n

When we moved here three years ago from metropolitan North America, it was the quintessential adventure. \u00a0Picture it. \u00a0A large island off the west coast of Canada, pristine rainforest on the edge of the Pacific ocean, small village, wild beauty that snatches\u00a0your breath away every time you open your eyes.\u00a0 Makes you think about redefining heaven.\u00a0 Great job: small, new, not-for-profit organization; young, energetic board of directors; ideals and possibilities and passion enough to refloat the Titanic.\u00a0 Hooah!<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

Now, fast forward three years: great business successes, significantly increased revenues, stellar community relations, a dream job, dream life come true!\u00a0 Right?\u00a0 Oh, yes indeed!\u00a0 Start the music!\u00a0 Roll the credits!<\/i>\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

Oh, wait a minute.\u00a0 There was<\/span><\/b> one small hitch. The dream job, from which I was planning to retire (it was seriously cool!) came to an unexpected end. \u00a0The surprises life sends our way can be doozies sometimes.\u00a0 The mystery of business politics behind closed boardroom doors being what it is, one fine May morning I walked out the boardroom door with the profuse appreciation of the board of directors for all I\u2019d accomplished, a lovely bonus, a stack of glowing letters of recommendation, a \u201cYou\u2019ve worked miracles!\u00a0 We think we can take it from here,\u201d and no job.<\/i>\u00a0<\/i>After the shock wore off and reality settled in, we did some serious soul searching and took a brutally honest look at our options.\u00a0 Tofino, a very small, remote village of about 1,500 people, doesn\u2019t boast many employment opportunities, let alone an executive coach to help plot the next career move.\u00a0 Regardless of how much we loved it here, the only answer seemed to be to move on.\u00a0 It was at this point McDean (my better half) and I decided it was time for something completely different.\u00a0 A new adventure.\u00a0 Which, of course, entails wrapping up the exit details of this one first.\u00a0 Literally. \u00a0One packing box at a time.<\/i><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/i>The beauty of it was we didn\u2019t have to do it after coming home exhausted from work and on week-ends, pushing some tight-wire deadline.\u00a0 We could take our time, sort through things and lighten up, have friends over for good-bye dinners and take long walks on the beach.\u00a0 Not a bad way to end one adventure and begin another, even if we don\u2019t yet have a clue where we\u2019re going.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We went for a walk on the beach today. \u00a0Chesterman Beach in Tofino, BC. \u00a0It\u2019s been ours for the last three years.\u00a0 \u00a0Only five more sleeps until we leave for a new adventure.\u00a0 Five more walks on this astonishing beach.\u00a0…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":526,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[36,35],"class_list":["post-705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-mexico-2","tag-tofino"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mbear.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mbear.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mbear.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mbear.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mbear.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=705"}],"version-history":[{"count":44,"href":"https:\/\/mbear.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1239,"href":"https:\/\/mbear.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions\/1239"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mbear.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mbear.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mbear.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mbear.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}