On choosing between Ice, and a warm place

Yohann R. Calpu

Published in

Play Powerful

4 min readApr 9, 2016

I’ve moved 12 times in the last 13 years…
What am I running from? Is it wanderlust? Who knows.

And you know the worst part?

6 of those times were with my first born baby girl, and all 12 have been with my now wife of 10 years.

Yep, she doesn’t like moving. She loves her space and likes to burrow in, a total nest builder, and resister of change. That’ll get me in trouble later.

Even changing her mind about where to go for dinner is a tough shift. So imagine what emotions come up during a move. She loves me like no one ever has, Period. I see it in her eyes everyday.

All this moving was accelerated when I wanted to make a stance, step on fear, and take a path that my father never would have…

…quitting a safe Canadian government job in Toronto. For an immigrant family this decision is like a 4 year old turning down a twisty rainbow popsicle.

I was truly bored after 8 years there. My life was safe, and there was no adventure. I was already counting down the remaining 17 years until retirement.

So in the year my daughter was born, and coincidently the same year I got an extra week of vacation, I gave in my resignation and left the perks behind me. I instead got to kept my daughter’s gift to me, which was to be a brave daddy.

Being an IT consultant afforded me opportunities to find work in many locations. I was really good at what I did, and what I did was in demand. I had choices, I used them, and when I did not want to be where I was, or treated unfairly in my mind…I left.

We lived in:

Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
Copenhagen, Denmark
South Portland, Maine, USA
Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Apollo Beach, Florida, USA

and finally…

Lithia, Florida, USA

Each of those moves was tough, as all moves are. I had it down to a science. If it didn’t fit in my 5ft by 8ft towing trailer, that stuff didn’t come with us. A collector’s nightmare indeed.

Was life adventurous? Hell yeah it was! Did we have family and friends around? Hell no! That was a good thing in some cases. In some cases not, but in most cases, we needed the space.

Well, guess what? My wife and I love where we are now in Lithia, Florida, just outside of Tampa. It is like heaven for us. We bought a house and my daughter has lots of little kiddos to play with on a daily basis. The weather is hot, just how we like it, and we live in a perfect neighborhood.

And we live happily ever after.

*Car brakes screech to a halt*

Um yeah. I wish. The company I work for has limitations on my job role and if I wanted to try another role closer to my heart, it would make it hard to stay here in the US permanently. We are still Canadian citizens, and the thought of getting sent back to the Phantom Zone aka Toronto is tearing my wife apart. No offense to Toronto, but it’s not you, its us.

A wise woman once said, “Contrast in life, let’s you know what you want, and more importantly what you don’t want”. Well, we sure know what we DO want.

And…it eludes us.

I see it in her eyes, when we talk about this. Nothing is imminent, I still have lots of time here, but she loves it so much here and she wants it permanently.

She wants to have that part of her life tucked away in a safe place. That certainty.

And I want more than anything else in the world…

To give it to her.

I will find a way. The “how to” is not apparent, and I really don’t care about worrying about it anymore. I have trust in universal forces, I KNOW we will be here and we will get what we want…eventually.

BUT…

I can’t stand to see her eyes water up. I love her so much, and to the core of my being I want to give her everything she wants. It was always easy to spoil her with jewelry, but I can’t buy this.

We will get through this, somehow. I cannot ask her to move again, and I’m not sure I want to. I am conflicted as to whether or not I should pursue my purpose in life and give up my warm place, or keep pursuing my dreams and live amongst the Ice.
Y