From my first week in Toronto I knew it wasn’t the place for me.

However, it took me six years, a death, a breakup, and the loss of my dream job to buy a one-way ticket out of there.

It was never my intention to settle in Toronto, but when love called, I responded. The couple I met while living in Australia had a job there. We decided to stay here for a few years and then return to the country where we met.

Still, I had a hard time acclimating to the concrete sprawl, especially after living in the lush Australian landscape and growing up surrounded by the rugged natural beauty of British Columbia.

If I was going to move forward, I realized I needed to appreciate Toronto for what it was: a shopping center. I set my sights on the ultimate distraction: professional fulfillment.

Luckily, I landed a contract job I loved in tech marketing in Toronto. I found that if I focused on work, it was easy to ignore other problems and pretend like I didn’t miss living near the ocean.

For a while, focusing on my career helped me ignore parts of my life that weren’t working.

After several contract extensions, I was finally offered a permanent position on my dream team, but something didn’t feel right.

On the one hand, I was doing a job I enjoyed with people I liked and respected. On the other hand, the gap between my partner and I had become a chasm, and our plan to return to Australia together seemed less likely the closer it got.

I had achieved the career goal I had spent a year working toward, but I was deeply unhappy. So I decided to spend a month in Canada’s Pacific Northwest.

Surfing in Tofino I realized that I hadn’t been in the water for six years. I hadn’t done many of the things I loved or taken any steps toward my lifelong dream of learning to sail.

I put aside all my personal ambitions and passions to be in a city I didn’t like, serving someone else’s dreams, and I ended up dedicating myself to work as a survival mechanism.

I began to wonder, if I wasn’t living by the ocean, doing these things I loved so much, who was I? And if my partner decided he didn’t want to leave Toronto, where would I go?

I still wasn’t ready to face reality, so I returned to Toronto and focused on what I knew would keep me tethered: my job. I became an ostrich, burying my head in my work, unwilling and unsure of how to fill the void.

After a restructuring and a breakup, I finally pushed myself to a new place: Ireland.

Sometimes when you ignore your intuition, the world stops pushing you and starts pushing you.

I was good friends with my coworkers, so when the group chat started playing while I was on vacation, I took note. One by one, my former teammates were called into meetings to notify them of their dismissal due to a restructuring. I felt sorry for them, but I was also relieved to no longer be on their team. I felt safe.

When my manager texted me to ask if he could make a quick call, I was a little surprised, but I thought it was nice of him to notify me of the personnel changes while I was on vacation.

I was not prepared to be part of the restructuring. Or that my seven and a half year relationship ended the day after I returned to Toronto. Or that my beloved grandmother died shortly after.

Sometimes life pushes so hard that the bond breaks.

That’s how I found myself lying on the air mattress in the guest bedroom of the Toronto house I’d grown to hate, wondering where to go next.

For me, doing something new had to start by going somewhere new.

I knew I needed to be by the water again, a place with accessible hiking, surfing, and nature. And, most importantly, I had to be somewhere where I could get a visa as an unemployed person over 30 years old.

Finally, I set my sights on Ireland, a country I had never visited. I got a temporary visa and booked my flight for November 8, a date I chose because I felt lucky.

Eighteen months later, I live a 20-minute walk from the beach in Dublin. I have a great job in tech marketing again, but without the sacrifice of living in a place that doesn’t feel like home. I’ve been surfing, finally learned to surf, and found a vibrant community.

Somehow, with a lot of hope but little expectations, a decision I made on a whim has led me to the life of my dreams. I am now working on getting my next visa so I can continue living in Dublin, where I hope to stay for a long time.