BC Dreamin'

If you haven't gathered from the sheer level of bitching on social media, parts of North America have been really, really cold over the past few weeks. Seasonal lows. Frozen pipes. A pale rider: and his name that sat on him was Death, and so on.

I've been surviving as best I can, with wool socks, subway tokens, and warm thoughts of a return to British Columbia. It didn't help that Quill and Quire seemed to present the perfect out a few weeks ago. Galliano Island Books wanted a part-time bookseller.

Why, I thought, I could be that part-time slinger of literature!

While going from a full-time to part-time job may seem like a demotion to some, this one isn't. At least not in my mind. It would be going to a part-time job on Galliano-freaking Island. That's like working cash in paradise. Not quite perfection, but as close as you can get without also having health benefits or an RRSP contribution plan. There would also be books and, one would hope, a discount on those books.

I even started to develop a plan to supplement my part-time income. Rent would be fairly inexpensive, as I was planning to purchase and then live out of a Delica van. Even if the Delica was more expensive than a cozy little apartment. Would that apartment be able to drive me to the beach, or come with a rocking bullbar? Doubtful.

The Delica could also become the manufacturing centre of my second source of income, Marty's Foraged Jams and Preserves. BC loves that stuff. All I would have to do was to come up with a full line of flavours that forced local delicacies into increasingly bizarre couplings and retailed for $15 (open to a barter system though). Suggested varieties: blackberry and seaweed, cattail and spruce tips, currant and pot from the neighbour's grow operation.

I described this plan to people. They laughed, I laughed. I was emphasizing a certain BC skillshare mania for effect, though it probably applies to about 3% of the BC population. I never applied for the job. But. But, underneath the absurdity of the foraged jam operation (which would probably lead to a Delica-shaped inferno in the middle of Galliano Island) is a genuine longing for British Columbia. I've always wondered if I made a mistake moving back east. I wonder a little more when it's the coldest February in Toronto in over a century, of course. But, even in spring, I would probably move back if I was given reason enough to do it, or full-time hours.