Late Night Introspection

Now, first off...this is by no means alcohol fueled. My antics last night kind of precluded my taking "full advantage" of the celebration this evening....maybe I am in fact getting a little older...

But anyway.

This week I was able to speak live (okay, MSN, but hear me out...) with my friend Chris, who is living near Manchester right now, for the first time since I bid he and his exceptionally cool friends (Kat and Elwyn) farewell as I caught my flight back to London from Ibiza in August.

Now, this was without question about the coolest trip I have ever taken, but I don't think I've given it due as the truly life-altering experience that it was. Now, I was the first person in two summers that Chris spent in the party capital of the world that ever visited from Canada, and he reiterated this week how great it was to have someone come all that way...but for as cool as it was for him to have someone to "talk Canadian" with again, it couldn't have possibly been better timing for me.

Flashback to August 2005...

I am working a crappy job that I had long since started to actively hate, I have found myself single again (not of my own doing, for the record), and things had really fallen apart with the pipe band that I had wanted to play with.

So what does Iain do? He decides that before ditching his shitty job, he had best use up the vacation that they begrudgingly grant him... Now, as with most crappy jobs, Iain isn't exactly rolling in money, and he also has nobody to travel with, so it's time to seek out friends in cool places. Luck would have it, that he had friends currently residing in London, England and on the island of Ibiza, off the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean Sea.

(I will now return to first person narration)

So, natually, I plan a trip to spend a week in London with Myalee, and another week in Ibiza with Chris. I had kind of unintentionally planned to spend two weeks with quite possibly the two most incredibly positive people I have ever met. Nothing gets them down, and the stories from their travels are nothing short of inspiring when you consider all the crap they have both been through, while still keeping their heads high. The total positive energy from the two of them was beyond contagious, and to make a long story short, I haven't been the same since I got back from the trip.

Not coincidentally, DC submitted my resume to my current employer while I was physically in Ibiza, and I was able to set up an interview from an internet cafe near the beach (talk about good karma!)... and the rest, as they say, is history....

While yes, the change of job and the new pipe band have had an influence on my day-to-day life, I don't think that any of it would have panned out as well as it did without the new outlook on life that I was able to absorb from Chris and Myalee. I really owe them both a tremendous debt of gratitude for just being who they are, and being in my life.

There truly is nothing that positive thinking and a little perseverance can't achieve...