Lucky Number 13

By the end of this month I will have moved house a total of 13 times. Within the past 10 years, I have packed boxes, downsized to what I absolutely needed and hauled my things to a new address. Sometimes this meant many carloads between locations where as sometimes this simply meant packing my backpack with all I owned and strapping it to my back as I walked out the front door to face new adventures.

Of the last 12 places I have lived, I did not include the time I called a campervan my home when in Australia nor did I include when my only home was the tent in my pack as I walked across New Zealand. And so, without those - this next change of address will be number 13.

I am hoping this next place of residence will be my lucky number 13. I am not going far - really just down the road a bit - but I am hoping my choice to live somewhere more affordable with a few other people in a house will allow me to have more flexibility in what I want to do with my life. Financially. Socially. Everything in between.

And so the next couple of weeks will wrap up the last 8 months I have lived in Wellington - it really doesn't feel as though I have been here that long and yet it feels as though I have lived here forever. This little place I call home was the start of the next stage in my life in so many ways and it will be bitter sweet to say goodbye.

I find it difficult to even conceptualize all that has happened in the past few months. Since I last wrote, I have started (and nearly finished) a position of Youth Development Coordinator at work where I have been working on developing a new support service for young adults with disabilities. Between balancing that and my other role of Outcomes Facilitator (supporting individuals with their goals in life) there has been little mental energy at the end of the day for much else. Things such as my art have gone by the wayside as I have been concentrating all my time in sinking my teeth into giving 110% at work.

But I have managed to start to make some connections in the community. I've picked up rock-climbing with a weekly group, continued to go to the markets each Sunday, explored the wide-variety of food and drink in Wellington (a Cambodian restaurant has taken the top of my list), gone to Roller Disco, watched a couple of rugby games and even had the pleasure of showing my mom around this little city I call home.

So as things get hectic in the next couple of weeks as I balance work, moving and sorting out Immigration (yes, my work visa also expires this month) I simply look forward to when the dust settles again and I can press on with all I want my life to be.

Not Quite Home Sweet Home

The letter came today. Immigration declined my Residency Application. I wasn't sure if I should be surprised or not given the tell-tale sign of Immigration approving any visa by first notifying me via email had never come. Just the letter. A letter stating that I was unfit for Residency due to the work conditions of my employment.

Curling up in a ball on the floor near my front door and letting the tears fall, I notified all my close friends of my failed attempt at long term security within New Zealand. Shortly after I made the mental note that perhaps today will just be another page in a book on my life. For who knows what tomorrow will bring. But until tomorrow comes, frustrated does not even begin to describe how I am feeling right now. My nearly 3-year stay in New Zealand has led me to 5 Work Visa applications (one being a Working Holiday), 2 medical + police checks, 1 education assessment of qualifications and the now failed attempt to gain Residency. Total cost? Exactly $5376 - not including postage, cost of passport photos, a new passport, transportation costs, etc.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't blame Immigration for the choice that they've made. They were only following their rule book. I was just hoping that perhaps with me being in the grey area, they could make an exception to their rigidity of rules. Just once.

The financial stress of this process is only a small part of the weight on my shoulders. It's the emotional and mental stress that does me in. The waiting. The deadlines. The not knowing what the future holds. The having no control over where or how I live my life. The knowing from deep within my soul that I am where I am meant to be, yet not having the ultimate say on making that a reality.

When I finally peeled myself from the floor of my front entrance to do something with my evening (or what was left of it), I noticed my horoscope for the day:

You may yearn for the good old days, a simpler time that seems to have slipped through your fingers. But don't worry because there are areas of your life that are still in major transition now. The fun times aren't over just because a current situation demands intense focus. Concentrate on your feelings today, even if  they aren't as whimsical as you prefer. A new round of rewards will arrive sooner than you think.

As hopeful as that sounds, the way I figure it - if the "new round of rewards" don't come soon, I might have to move onto Plan B and get myself a nice Kiwi bloke so New Zealand might want to keep me around a while longer. It's either that or maybe a pot of gold to help me through perhaps another application for Residency.

Dreams Do Come True

I truly believe that anything is possible in life. Dreams do come true. Our deepest desires of life ambitions are something that could be one day. Provided you have the tools and support there to make it happen. I have the privilege of being that very support for people in the job I do. Not only do I get to help people realize their dreams, but I also get to be there to help them plan how they are going to achieve those very special life goals. 

The best part this last week was being able to go to a national gathering of all Outcomes Facilitators in New Zealand where we spent two days discussing how we could better support people to help achieve their goals. To be in a room with people who didn't just think that any dream was achievable, but that any person (no matter their disability) could achieve it -- was inspiring, to say the least. 

It has only been in this last week that I have been able to reflect on my life and the opportunities presented to me as this past month has been one large whirlwind of cramming as much new information in my head as humanly possible. It is just now that the dust has started to settle and I can start to breath again with confidence that I know which direction I am headed in. Or at least until the next challenge needs to be faced. 

One of the challenges I know will come in my near future is my volunteer position with Red Cross Refugee Services. This past month has been many meetings with other volunteers to train on the skills and information needed to work with refugees and not feel completely overwhelmed. Some of us still feel overwhelmed with the task, but at least we have a better idea of what we will be facing. 

For the next six months, us volunteers will be divided into teams and each team will be assigned a refugee family to help settle into life in Wellington. Things that we generally take for granted - how to keep warm in the winter, how to take transit, what an EFTPOS/Debit card does, or even just how to speak in English to get what we want - will generally be a huge challenge for many of the refugees relocating to New Zealand. Again, it is an incredible privilege to be part of this process - to be part of someone's life as it is changing so dramatically - to be part of the process in helping someone create a place they can call home. 

So much of the training for Refugee Services left me feeling amazed at the process that most of these individuals go through. There is so much loss in many of these peoples lives and yet for them to reach the point of being accepted as refugees to a new country, they have already become survivors. Given that the average time spent at any refugee camp waiting for the call to say they have been accepted to a new country is a whole 17 years, it truly is the strong at heart that make it. 

While every refugee's story is different and their anguish personal, they all share a common thread of uncommon courage: the courage not only to survive, but to persevere and rebuild their shattered lives. (Antonio Guterres)

Anyway, back to my life - work is good. Friends are good. The weather is good (though I'm told "winter" is here... I'm still walking around most days with no coat). And I still wait on Residency. The last of my paperwork has gone through and now it's just crossing my fingers in hope that everything I passed on will give me the go ahead for Residency Status. The waiting is hard, but at least I know I am finally starting to feel a bit more settled here in Wellington regardless. Now if I could just get the neighbourhood cat  to stop sneaking into my house when I'm not around..... 

The Truth Will Set You Free

I think one of the most difficult things to do in life is to be honest with ourselves. It's easy to be honest with others, about things, in life - but with ourselves? All too often we tell ourselves things that aren't true. Small things. Big things. Things that change the way we see ourselves or even live our life.

In the past couple weeks I have been trying to do better on being honest  with myself, but it has meant a certain amount of pain. It has meant that things I have took at face value for so many years are suddenly not what I thought they were. It has meant that I have had to take a deep breath and seriously look at myself and decide if I really want to be the type of person I am - not who I thought I was.

This past week I had an incredibly humbling moment. I say humbling, but at the time it felt more humiliating than anything else. For the past few years I have made choices in my life that have resulted in a lifestyle that would just let me get by financially. Whether it was the job I chose, the apartment I wanted to rent, the groceries I spent my money on, the school I went do, the countries I travelled to - whatever it was, financially I have just gotten by. And in a lot of ways, that's okay - it's pretty great really.

Lately I have had to take a hard look at myself and realize that though money is something I don't much care for, all that I want to do in my life costs money - money I don't have. A while ago I had to be honest with myself and admit that I have a problem with credit cards -- it's not that they don't agree with me, it's that they agree too much. Over the past years I have managed to whittle away at my debt until I am officially now at a point that I no longer have credit cards (yay me).

But I am yet to be debt free. There's still money I owe for student loans and money I owe family. That's not where I had to be honest with myself this week. Having no job has thrown me face-to-face with the reality that I have never actually kept to any budget in my life. EVER. It seems ridiculous to me that that is a fact in my life now that I have admitted it to myself, but it's the truth. And having no job just made it that much more apparent. There was no safety net of knowing when my next paycheck would come in - no smokescreen to hide how I handled the money I did have. And the reality was that I hadn't a clue where my money went.

The past couple of months I have been religiously writing down everything I spend in a budget journal - right to the last penny. I've been that annoying person at the corner store asking the clerk to print me a receipt when there's a line of 10 people behind me. I've been the person that has an envelope of receipts and actually schedules time each week to go over my budget and every month I plan the next budget. It's been excruciatingly painful at times to walk away from purchases I normally wouldn't have taken a second thought at buying. It's been hard to focus my grocery budget on the cash I have in my hand rather than the fabulous meal I have been drooling about making for the past week. It's been difficult, but I've started to get the hang of it. But that's not what I had to be honest about with myself this week.

This week the moment came when a cheque from Canada didn't get processed like I thought it would this week. And I was stuck. This money was exactly the amount I needed to get me through to when I do actually get paid from my new job and now it wasn't coming. It could take up to a month for them to process it as it is an international cheque. I didn't have a month. I had barely a week to come up with the money needed for rent. And I had nothing.

And so I had to ask my family for temporary help - and though I know it was temporary until the cheque cleared, it was one of the most humbling and humiliating experiences of my life. It wasn't the asking that was difficult, it was the response I got. It was the realization that my financial and lifestyle choices over the years had left an imprint on my family's mind of the type of person I was. The type of person with financial problems. They type of person that might not be able to pay back the money borrowed. The type of person that had no safety net. It was the realization that my financial support was not just going to come from my mom, but also from my Grandma who is retired and my sister who is three years younger than I am.

THAT's when I had to get honest with myself this week. Yes, the money borrowed from my family was a temporary loan to help me while I wait for this cheque to clear, but the bigger picture is the reality that I knew from the depths of my soul that I never wanted to be thought of as "that person" ever again.

It would be easy to lie to myself and gloss over the situation I am in to say that I have a job and it's just a matter of being paid. It would be easy to say that my budget situation is getting better and that I shouldn't worry. It would be so easy to just brush off my current loan and say it's "only temporary," but the reality of it all is that this is just the last thing that has happened in a string of support from people in my life to help me "get by." And I no longer want to be that person. I never really realized I was that person - but I don't want any part of it. I no loner want to be just "getting by." I want to feel secure with where I am financially. I want to actually be reaching my financial goals and living my life based off of my priorities - not what happens to be on sale in the next store window.

Beads, Beads and More Beads

I have officially (and FINALLY) begun to turn the corner in my life. It has felt as though it's been forever where I have been floating through the fog that is called my existence as I wait for it all to clear so I can see what is up ahead. Well it's finally happened.

I got the call this past week that I have been offered a position with IDEA Services. Only the biggest organisation within New Zealand that's aim is to support people with intellectual disabilities and advocate for their rights - I am super excited to have the opportunity to work with them. I will be an Outcomes Facilitator  where I will work with clients on developing their Life Plans and helping them to achieve their goals. All I can do is eagerly wait my start date so I can jump in with both feet and get started.

In the meantime, I have been spending the past couple of weeks developing my art profile again. It has been WAY too long since I have seriously delved into my creative mind, but the time has come. I have dusted off my collection of jewellery supplies and gotten back to the basics of what it was that hooked my addiction to the creative arts way back when. It still stuns me to realize how much supplies I actually have to create jewellery and other works of beaded things.

As my hands have gotten busy creating things, I figured it was time to put some energy into updating my online profile and finally set things up so I can sell things worldwide online. So for those of you who haven't heard yet, I have updated my artsite (www.shalanehopkins.com) to include a blog where I will be regularly sharing my journey of artistic creativity and simple ideas on things to create in and around your home. I have also created a Facebook Page (Shalane Hopkins - Artist) That will include mostly a collection of my creative journey through photographs and provide a platform for people to interact with me and share my works with their friends. Then to sell things online, I have opened my Etsy store called Paper Kite Creations where you are able to purchase anything I have for sale online.

The name Paper Kite Creations is founded by a type of butterfly called Paper Kite. These butterflies are most commonly found in Southeast Asia and remind me a lot of my journey of my art. Butterflies are symbolic of change, growth and a person's soul. As my work has been a journey to get to where I am today and I am constantly looking for new ways to develop myself further and be creative in more ways that one, this symbolism fit.

All these pages are then linked to one another and include links to my Pinterest page and Twitter profile. I've definitely gone on a social media frenzy in the last few weeks, but I figure it's the best way for me to build up my art profile and help me gain momentum in selling my work.

So what I guess I'm saying is spread the word. Check out some of the links here - follow me. Get involved. Give me feedback or let me know what you like. Help me to move forward so I can get back on the bandwagon of a creative lifestyle.