Today I cried a little. Not a lot. But a little. Just something about the day. The last few days warranted it.
Today I just had 14 consecutive hours of drilling. A constant stream of interruptions, nagging, pointless observations on the world and complaints. Having a hyperactive child at home, when I need to work, and it’s raining over my only breaks between meetings so I can’t even run him is… exhausting.
And it compounds upon the week prior of having him under my feet and a long weekend away where all I do is end up resenting him. I compare his childhood against my own, and he just accepts everything I ever could have dreamed of as a child. His weekend was all rollercoasters, water parks and bike rides in the woods. Only interrupted with whatever he wanted from a patisserie or steakhouse.
Then in the few respites, there was a tiny pup trying to chew her way through cables, plants and any carpet she had yet to piss on.
To cap it all. Today felt the first time that I felt genuinely as a second class citizen. I consider Canada my home now and have for a long time. And as a Canadian who is native in one of the legal languages I have a hard time reconciling being told that I am inferior and need to change my ways.
Previously, I was learning French on my own time, at my own pace. Out of curiosity. Out of a wish to improve my appreciation of the city. But now I’m being told by my local government that my employer is at risk of a lawsuit because a bunch of documents for Anglophone clients isn’t all translated.
It really is a slap in the face to have the feeling that my career of some 15 years is wrong. That I’m doing it wrong.
What it does, is make me want to leave Quebec on the principle of the thing. And to have my peers nod along and agree with it because we’re not “some international like Microsoft” but because we “take some funding from the government”. Where does it end?