Should I stay.. or go?

02/20/2012

Today I stopped in at Danielle's neighbor Howard's to ask him about a construction job that he was looking into for me. He had suggested that I take a $60-100 class to get my White Card (a health & safety certification necessary for most all manual labour jobs in Australia) but the job wasn't even really available and I don't have money for food let alone a job that, as it turns out, doesn't actually exist. In town I checked and found that my card PIN still wasn't working even though I had changed it earlier (maybe BECAUSE I had changed it, but can't remember my old pin anyways because I haven't used it for too long). I went to the Grace Emily Hotel at 8:30p and drank water while meeting a few people and waiting for the free food at 11p. At 11:30p the food was finally ready... but they were charging  for it. Oh well, it was worth a shot.

02/21/2012

Today I rode 15km to apply for another job and then went to a prayer meeting down Anzac Highway.

I've been thinking a lot lately about going somewhere exciting, like Brisbane. Brisbane is a place where I can see amazing things and visit one of the most beautiful places in the world – Cairns. On the other hand, I feel like any of these popular tourist spots are going to be big, expensive cities packed with other backpackers looking for work. The thing is that I am actually making some progress here in Adelaide – I have a network of friends, free accomodation, work to get me by, and maybe even a real job on the horizon (which is pretty good considering the current lull in the job market). Also, the Fringe festival is on so I figure it might be good to stick around for that. It’s just that I feel like when I finally do go to this new place (might also consider Perth or somewhere up North like Darwin) I might wonder why I didn’t go sooner!

I asked a blogging friend about this and he says that I'm in "an interesting situation but at the end of the day, it’s a good one to have! Having to choose between staying in Adelaide, where you seem to be well set up, or moving on to a different Australian city, where you’ll once again meet new people and find new opportunities, is a choice that many people don’t have. And I think you should do whatever you are comfortable with. Perth and Darwin and Brisbane aren’t going anywhere so if you enjoy where you’re at now, then stay. At some point you’ll feel that it is the right time to move on and when that happens, you should move on. But if you’re not fully convinced yet, then there’s no reason to change your situation."

I think that’s the right way to look at it, might as well stay a bit – I have a year and, as he says, “Perth and Darwin and Brisbane aren’t going anywhere.”