Finding Something Else

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Winnipeg was unlike I’d ever seen. Maybe because of repeated visits (this my fourth), maybe because of nostalgia, I found myself seeing more in this trip. So many murals, patient trees, people bundled for the weather (which was mild). I walked one evening to a Safeway grocery (against advice from a customer-colleague) in an aging neighborhood. I distinctly felt like a foreigner, like the cashier and I were speaking different languages, like I felt in Mexico City.

Most nights, I ate a quiet, deliberate dinner at Stella’s at Plug In, a hip restaurant near my hotel, while reading a thick biography of Dr. King, musing about duality - not good and bad necessarily, but inner and outer selves, being great and being average, being remembered and being forgotten.

The last night, I lay in bed feeling anxious and defeated, having been reminded by a conversation with my trainee that I gave up on the hardest (networking) test I’ve ever taken. Then today I thought, “I’ve found my limit, and it’s time to do something else.”

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