Gonna Be A Rock Star
by
You remember it clearly. The day your turn comes to sit with a teacher or a counsellor and talk about..."the future".
"So, Johnny, what do you want to do when you leave school?"
Let's face it, no one ever answers that question with, "Yeah, sir, I wanna spend the rest of my life working for some faceless grocery store, wearing the pig 'orrible uniform and waiting for a pathetic 2% pay rise every year." Although that would be interesting. When you're a pimply, know-it-all teenager obsessed with girls' bras and trying to buy cheap cider from the local off-licence, the world of being a responsible adult with a full-time job is a distant thought (and for some of us it still is).
So the question "What do you want to do when you leave school?" invariably conjures up images of playing for your favourite football team or winning a Nobel Prize or owning your own company. And not working in a dead-end job, stuck behind a desk for eternity with the possibility of having a heart attack before you're forty.
For my own sins I vaguely remember answering something along the lines of "I wanna be a copper, sir!" Of course, secretly I knew I was destined to be a superhero, rescuing damsels in distress and beating up bad guys. Failing that, a rock star of epic proportions would do, singing soulful lyrics and fending off the groupies with a big stick. Unfortunately I realise the only superhero status I might ever achieve is "Beer Belly!!! And his faithful sidekick, Lard Arse!" And as for a rock star, well, apparently they tell me you have to be able to sing or at least play an instrument, for both of which my attempts have been 100% unmitigated failures.
Now you may wonder what in the blazes this has to do with expats. Well, for me and I realise for many people, emigrating to a new country is not only a start of a new life but also a chance of new possibilities. Specifically moving to a new country and a new land it can be very difficult to land jobs of a similar position you were at before. Unless of course you moved because of your job, in which case you can stop reading now and stop making the rest of us jealous.
Me? Well I spent years grafting away, working hard, nose to the grindstone, learning, studying and working my way up to the position of IT System Manager looking after dozens of computer systems. Well that's the fantasy at least. The reality of course is that I spent years avoiding work, seeing how much I could get away with claiming expenses for trips I had never taken, blaming everyone around me for my mistakes and taking credit for everyone else's successes... so you could say I was a natural leader.
But that was all before I emigrated to Canada and became just another IT immigrant looking for a job. Somewhere along the way of hard grafting etc... I completely forgot to actually get qualified in anything, must have slipped my mind (ahem) so I found myself looking at a somewhat stark reality that my dreams of landing a high powered, well paid, easy going tech job in Canada were perhaps not going to happen.
And that's when it hit. Through all my youth I promised myself that whatever I did in my life I never wanted to work a desk job. I also promised myself that I wouldn't smoke or drink. Now 15 years later, a few inches thicker around the waist and with the lung capacity of a five-year-old, stuck behind a desk, I realised I had thrown away all my childhood hopes and dreams.
So I decided enough was enough and that a new life, new country, new wife, meant a new career, so I enthusiastically set off to find one. Unfortunately new careers were not so enthusiastic to find me. After a couple of months of coming upon dead end after dead end I somehow, and quite remarkably got a job as, you guess, an IT techy. Darn it! Now this isn't a tale with a happy ending along the lines of "I eventually got a job as xxxx and it is my dream and I could never go back to what I did before." Oh no. That would be far too simple. But this is a more of a tale of "Well gosh, darn it, I might not have succeeded this time but that doesn't mean I am giving up."
As someone far wiser than myself once said (I believe it was Edison), "I have never failed, only found 10,000 ways something doesn't work." And whilst I may not have got out of the IT field just yet I am mightily pleased to say that I am applying to the local Police Force. Albeit as a part-time officer for the moment, that would at least give me the opportunity to ensure that I like it (a sort of look before you leap type of deal). So if you're travelling the roads of Alberta anytime soon, watch out for a short, round police officer, probably located close to the nearest Tim Horton's..........oh, that's all police officers, you say. Well, I'll be the only one with a British accent, covered in nicotine patches.
So I guess the moral of this rambling tale is: if you are emigrating or have emigrated don't be afraid to look at all the possibilities and seek out new avenues for yourself. You never know what will happen or what you might find.
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