Timothy Baril

I’ve been struggling for some time with money, being burdened with some rather large outstanding debts. This has meant I’ve been far to embarrassed to even contemplate the idea of dating and finding a future, let alone eating regularly. So I’ve been looking about for a second job and the like. Hoping I could clean up my finances and become a somewhat more attractive person/mate.

Former university roommate Dave Swanton is working in a mining exploration camp up north east of Yellowknife. His crew was in desperate need of another geo-tech, and he gave them my resume. Next thing you know, lovely Alicia at Dundee Mining is phoning and offering me a job! Dave - you rock. Thanks a ton!!!!

(I was going to bring you a texas mickey or case of whiskey in thanks, but apparently they’ll fire me for bringing alcohol to camp. They didn’t say anything about escorts though!)

I love working at EnviroPerfect Solutions, but I’m barely scraping by paying the bills, and they can’t afford what they pay me anyway. So I can’t afford not to take this mining job. Besides which, it’s going to be a hell of an adventure. I’m going to stay on as a consultant/contractor at EPS, and offer whatever help I can, maintain the company’s website, etc. I don’t want to abandon ship, and I want the company to succeed, but I need a change of direction or my personal life will continue to suffer.

The mining exploration camp is at Goose Lake, very remote, and still deeply entrenched in winter even though it is March. Temperature is around -50 degrees Celsius right now. Lots of snow and ice. Not polar bear country, but apparently there are grizzleys and great fishing and the dreaded northern black fly whose bite makes mosquitoes and horse flies pale in comparison.. Will probably not see Spring until June. About the same time that night stops arriving and it becomes permanently daylight. It’s a semipermanent exploration camp, very small and rough. Pics to follow soon when I get there.

I’ll apparently be a bit of jack-of-all trades, doing whatever needs doing. My main job is logging core samples, then field work in the summer. Pay is $225/day + 10% field bonus (minus 2% stupid Nunavut “payroll tax” whatever the fuck that is). No benefits, but the job expires September 1, so that’s to be expected. They pay for room and lodging while I’m there, and travel expenses. It’s roughly 4 weeks in camp, 2 weeks at home, then back.

I’ve got someone looking at my puppies on Wednesday, may have a new home for them soon. This is extraordinarily sad, like giving up children, and I fucking hate it. I’ll probably cry like a little girl. But it has to be done, and it looks like a really good home for them. I hope they’ll let me visit them once in a while.

If I can unload my car quickly, I can start putting a lot of money towards my loans, get half of them paid off by the time the job ends. That’s huge. Right now I’m just struggling to make minimum payments on everything. If I can find a job over the winter in Fort MacMurray or something, I could be debt free in a year. That’ll mean being able to live and work in Asia, or even if I stayed in Canada, having enough money to eat regularly. Right now, my diet is mostly rice and protein shakes. I even had to stop buying perogies cause they were too much money. It sucks.

I was about to say I wish I’d done this earlier, going to do camp jobs or the like for extra money, but that would have meant not dating Susie or Jie, so I don’t wish that at all. But if I calculate it out, after I’m done working off debts this year, and maybe next, I’ll be about 30 years old when I’m ready to start teaching overseas. 30. God that’s old.

I’d like to teach at least one year, maybe as many as 3. So I could be about 34 when I’m done and back in Canada. I’ll have no further qualifications for a job than I do now, so I’ll have to go back to school. I’ll be writing my books while working and teaching, but they very well may not be a success, so I can’t count on that as part of my future.

So at 34, am I too old to be looking for a wife? I’d really like to meet and be with a girl who’s about 23 or 24-ish. Ten years older than a girl I meet, seems kind of a giant difference in age. With 5 years of exploration work and teaching overseas, am I going to feel extra old on top of that, being with a girl who’s fresh out of university and still new to the world? So probably I’m going to have to find someone older, right? If girls don’t look down on 34+ year olds who haven’t secured their future yet.

I’ve got this nagging feeling like being 34 with no money and no job offers about zero security to a girl, and thus has a pretty low appeal as far as serious relationships go. Jie openly wanted me to be more secure. I’m sure Susie always wanted more out of me that way too. If I go back to school after teaching 3 years, even if I get a 12 month teaching degree, I’ll be going on 36 by the time a get a permanent job. Wow - 36. This is about when some guys start getting the 7 year itch in their marriages or their mid-life crisis is right around the corner, and here I am just now able to maybe get a girl?

So is spending time overseas a selfish way to spend precious years that may prevent my future happiness in meeting the right girl?

Well, maybe things aren’t that negative. I could meet a girl while paying off my debts, who wants to go overseas and teach too. I could meet a girl in China or Korea or Japan where I’m teaching. I do love Asian girls. Maybe I won’t go directly from working to teaching, and take a break living in Vancouver, where I could meet a girl, who hopefully wants to come teaching with me. I could not do the 3+ years of teaching in a row, and similarly come back to Vancouver and maybe find a girl, then go back over with her.

Do I sense a pattern? Do I seem anxious about something? Am i haven’t trouble focusing on my priorities?

Everything is, of course, flexible and hypothetical from day to day. I mean, Friday morning last week I was going in to the office like every day for the 9 months prior, thinking no differently. Monday morning I’m booking a flight to Yellowknife with a new job and future for the next 6 months. Things can change rapidly. This does not mean that I shouldn’t contemplate the future, try to direct myself, or plan. But, like chess, it’s not a bad idea to think 17 moves ahead, along a dozen different courses of potential action. Seems negative? Well, how about this:

Working myself debt free by Spring 2009, I depart for Japan or Korea that Summer to begin teaching in the Fall semester. After one year of teaching I’ve spent every spare moment writing and have enough material to begin marketing my writing. I bumped into the next Lee Hyori singing sensation and in a Hollywood style whirlwind romance we instantly hit it off and get engaged. Publication of my novels breaks all tradition and I’ve written the next Harry Potter success. So, by 35 I’m filled with experience and wealth, and have the girl of my dreams at my side, utterly happy for the first time in my life. Anything is possible, right?

I want to live in Asia. I want to fall in love and build a life with a girl. Share it with someone, because going it alone is boring and lonely. And sex with love dolls just doesn’t appeal to me. Not unless it’s with a real girl too and part of her kinky sex fantasies. Going over it in my head this way, perhaps the ideal thing would be to teach a year, come back to Vancouver, maybe get my teaching degree or another degree, meet the girl of my dreams, then go back over to Asia, where we could experience it together, but having a year under my belt already, it makes it easier on both of us. We share the adventure, then come back to Canada and worry about life after. Yes, this could work.

Great! Now, Life, please fall into place exactly according to my wishes and plans with no delays or unpleasant deviations. Thank you. Unless said deviations lead to the part where Lee Hyori falls in love with me and I end up fabulously rich and successful. That’s fine. I just don’t want to live in a cardboard box on the street, ok?

Ok, so, previous reasoning leads me to the age of 36. Lets make a To Do list of things to accomplish by age 35. Nice round number. In no particular order:

1. Meet wicked awesome and beautiful girl, fall in love - DO NOT screw it up - be engaged/married
2. Teach/live in Japan
3. Teach/live in Korea/China
4. Learn Japanese
5. Learn Korean/Mandarin
6. Obtain or begin teaching degree, or law degree, or MBA, or accounting degree
7. Become debt free
8. Put aside nest egg/retirement fund of $20′000 to make up for total lack of RRSPs to date
9. Finish plans for entire H.H. series of novels, and have no less than half of the series completed, ready for marketing

So by 35, if I accomplish most of those, I’ll be 5-10 years behind everyone else my age. Is that important? Probably not. You only get one life to live. If I’m 40 and alone and miserable, I’ve failed myself according to my own standards, and I’m going to work hard so that doesn’t happen. But if I’m 35 and I did all that I wanted to, great. I just hope that all this makes me a better person and I can be good enough to be someone special to a great girl, worthy of her love and respect. Not a total failure like my father, or his before him, and his before him, and so forth.

Wouldn’t it be great if we all lived to be 200 years old, so that you didn’t feel so pressured to have your whole life figured out so god damned quickly? Ah well, if life were easy, it would be boring, right?

Time to pack. I’ve got a plane to catch in 3 days. Good thing music and video collections are now digital and transportable. I’m looking forward to good people, good work and good times.