LIGHT TRAFFIC

Roads taken/Oregon © Carolyne Weldon

Up until not very long ago, I was always stuck having the same tired conversation with gym clerks and cellphone-company sales reps.

That Armenian kid Arda, who folds towels at my ghetto, fogged-up 24-hour gym, or those tall guys in dark striped shirts and lots of hair gel, who peddle phones and daytime minutes in downtown malls, they’d always tell me:

“Miss Weldon, you should really smarten up and get a three-year plan/ (membership). You understand you’re ruining yourself, right? Just get a three-year contract and we’ll throw in a free iPhone/ (year of bhangraxcercise classes).”

And time and again, I’d look up from my 400$ phone bill/ (expired gym pass) and say:

“Wish I could. You’re sweet. But honestly, I really have no clue where I’ll be, in six-months time.”

Boasts of this order, turns out, were at best a hodge-podge mix of wishful thinking, ambition, and the worse kind of cheesy, self-help book style “manifesting”: there were definitely times where Montreal’s seasons – green, brown, white, beige – went through a couple rotations before I boarded a plane to somewhere new.

Yet for years and years, I lived my life with the angsty preparedness of a young, on-call flight attendant.

I rarely left the house without my passport, and always felt there was some crazy adventure lurking, right around the bend.

Sure, sometimes I actually went places. There was the infamous Turkey Series, chapters I, II and III, and all that concomitant going gaga over turquoise tiles, hammam domes, and tulip-shaped tumblers of tea sipped in the shade, Aegean-side.

There was also my most recent jaunt across Canada, alongside the fierce Victoria Revay, my brave and steady sister in arms. The whirlwind journey that led to a sweet, unlikely cabin at the end of a dirt road, near Fairbanks, Alaska.

But back at the mall/ (protein-shake bar), after 10 more minutes of haggling (“Come on! What is it? You want unlimited texting in the US?”) my answer was still the same.

“Nah, thanks. Let me just pay for another month.”

Well, believe it or not, ladies and gentlemen, my hobo persona (real and pretend), was recently smacked upside the head and inspired to start whistling a completly different tune.

This is how it happened, as far as I can tell. When I was still in Alaska, this fall, the ever useful Sean Power tracked me down and told me about this job opening, at The National Film Board of Canada. Some sort of French writing job… full-time… 9 to 5… in an office. A real job, like. For normal people.

Sounds both exciting and scary, I thought. “You should really consider applying,” Sean said.

So right before Christmas – against all odds – I joined the NFB’s web team, probably the most happening department in Canada’s freshest Crown Corporation.

On top of learning, at the tender age of 28, how to be a normal grown-up with a day job, and I now spend my days writing French copy for the NFB’s online screening room and blog, both of which you should check out if you read French and/or have the remotest interest in film.

Yes, it all happens in an office. But it’s definitely a bright, friendly sort of place, with all kinds of clever people working in it, which totally helps. People with mommy blogs and blooming cartoonist careers. People I feel I can learn a lot from.

And these days, for the first time in my life, I’m signing contracts like it’s going out of style. I rock a solid, three-year gym membership (oh the smile on Arda’s face), and nurture an ever deepening relationship with the iPhone the mall guys gave me, the day I swore allegiance to Fido till next Inca apocalypse.

And the worse part is I’m having a great time. Don’t tell anyone, but I think this hobo has finally found a home.