"A new life in the off-world colonies. A chance to begin again..."

Minutes before I was ready to leave I was pulled into a conference call, the point of which was little more than five people telling me once again that my opinion and expertise is not valued and to STFU and deal with what I am told. I have the distinct feeling that I am being given the bum's rush in the hopes that I'll get fed up and "voluntarily" leave and thus not be eligable to collect my severance package.

The other thing that pissed me off was the way the new flag-poles the building just installed are being used. They installed three poles and ran flags up them for the first time yesterday. The Korean consulate is in the building and they have the Korean flag in flying from the centre pole with the Canadian flag in an inferior position. That offends me. I called the building managers and lodged a complaint and also went next door to the recruiting off that happens to be there to encourage them to also say something about it.

I went home feeling like everything is going to shit here. I was inspired to start looking a little more seriously at jobs in New Zealand and renew my old subscriptions to job boards down there. One of the boards also has jobs from Australia and I saw an interesting posting in Melbourne that inspired me to take a look at the immigration requirements. Turns out I have enough points that moving to Australia is an option as well as New Zealand.

I'm still really not sure of what to do next. I haven't head anything back about the job in Victoria, which leads me to believe it was one of those government postings where they already had someone to fill the job but were required to post it anyway. Shame. I'm still kicking around the idea of opening a store, but that can only happen if I collect in full on my retention and severence package, which I'm not convinced I can count on. I'd love to go back to the autonomy and control over my own life afforded by running my own business again, but with a better foundation than a pile of debt.

In order to recover a some sanity I started a new drawing last night after checking out my options in Australia. Tonight I have "press access" to photograph the Valentine's burlesque and lingere show at the Plaza - which I count as another small sanity saving item. At least it seems like my creative work is getting a little more recognition. There are the pictures from the Collide show that are up on their website now. And today Max from Kooper Kain sent me an e-mail wanting to use a bunch of my club pictures on the inside of their new album cover (I still have to mail him back about this). I am definitely going to get a new and better camera this year and push this all a bit further, regardless of where my "day job" takes me.