When you take a stab at a long shot, sometimes it pays off. It was sometime last winter when I encountered a CBC news story about something called a Workcation being offered by the City of Saint John. If you can work from anywhere, said the City, why not work here? They not only arranged accommodations, tours and social life, they offered to subsidize the cost of a month’s stay.
Work from Anywhere
I do have the luxury of working from anywhere where there’s a valid internet connection or phone signal, so I certainly qualified in that regard. In 2017, there was a week spent on the Bay of Fundy in the Advocate Harbour area, and enjoyed immensely, so I applied for the Saint John Workcation.
However, I was rejected. Perhaps my mistake was that I’d shared that I would prefer to rent rather than own, should I decide to move to New Brunswick. There was no room to elaborate that I would take some time determine where I wanted to live and would rent in the meantime.
It’s easy enough to project the intent behind the Workcation initiative, to stimulate the local economy by bringing in reinforcements to the tax base without the more complex task of job creation to initiate the influx. And, hey, the real estate transactions would be a cash flow stimulus.
2nd Time Lucky
It never hurts to put the effort into connecting, even through email, and my witty repartee (citation needed) made me memorable enough that, when a vacancy in the program opened, my contact with the Workcation program remembered me and extended a participation offer for the Fall of 2021, even though it was already half past summer.
Well, I’m flexible of schedule if not so much of physique, so my ears perked up and I requested more details. They arrived, they were satisfactory, and since, I’ve been putting together the pieces of the puzzle, and now I’m just a few days away from my pending departure.
As is my wont during travel, I like to take and post photographs, typically at the end of each day. My photographic style is instinctive. I don’t like the camera to stay in between me and the experiences of a new place, so I shoot quickly and often without much thought, my personal take on Cartier-Bresson’s Decisive Moment philosophy, a principle I’ve intellectually struggled with for over 30 years, variously agreeing and disagreeing with Henri’s thoughts on the matter.
Here, in this tentative blog that hasn’t been used much since the original idea a few years ago, is where I’m going to post photos and thoughts, should any occur to me, rather than start yet another single-trip blog. That is, at least, the intent now. We’ll see how it goes.
-Scott. 09/11/2021, London, ON
Itinerant Impressions 