I could hear the surprise my Mom’s voice as she reacted to the news that I had accepted a last-minute teaching position in Manizales, Colombia. She was right. “The plan” was to stay in Toronto where I had been living for the last year.

Since 2007, I had lived in seven different cities: Kingston, Ottawa, and Toronto, Ontario. Banff, Alberta. London, UK. Fort St. John, British Columbia. Pond Inlet, Nunavut. After years of being away from home, I was feeling a strong pull to put down roots in Toronto where I’d lived on and off since 2009.

However, things in Toronto weren’t really coming together as I’d hoped they would. By the end of the summer, I was feeling frustrated, heart-broken, and restless. So when my good friend messaged me out of the blue to tell me that her school in Manizales was looking for a grade five teacher, I began to wonder if life’s really meant to be lived according to a specific plan. As my friend reminded me, “Toronto will always be there”. Thus, I abandoned “the plan” and opted instead for a more uncertain path,  “the one less traveled” that Robert Frost wrote about.

Maybe the pressure to “have a plan” and follow a linear path prevents us from taking risks on the spontaneous opportunities that could lead us in the right direction (or maybe I’m just trying to justify a foolish decision).

This all being said, it was never part of my plan to live in Colombia, but here I am.