Alert-120

One unit of measurement I haven’t expected to use as often as I do is Julian Day. Many dates utilize the Julian day alongside the Zulu (or Universal Time Standard) time to avoid the confusion of time zones and DD/MM/YYYY or MM/DD/YYYY debate.

Today’s Julian Day is 54 (the 54^th day of the year), and I turn 21! I have been in Alert for 56 days out of the 118 total days I will be here for, so almost, halfway. The full moon is also tomorrow, and I have probably been using the moon way more often as a unit of time for myself up here than any calendar, and I will continue to do so until the sun is up for good.

You’d think 56 days here, I would’ve already gotten nice and comfortable. My room all neat and orderly. WRONG! Only yesterday did I decide to finally make this dingy room feel like home rather than a place I go to sleep and watch tv.

ROOM TOUR!

Coming up to Alert I was a little embarrassed using some of the precious suitcase space to pack twinkle light vines, knickknacks, and pictures, not to mention vacuum sealing my squishmallow Winston so I wouldn’t be alone in this journey, but in hindsight, I am glad I did. Even the smallest boost of dopamine is treasured when coming back to your room at the end of the day (of course after your daily static shock of touching your doorknob). It makes the room feel more personalized and less like a military dorm room.

My snack trove, and tech site. I am given a laptop connected to the military monitored internet called GPNet. I use it mostly for social media and playing music, so I hope whoever watches from behind the screen likes Weezer.

Despite completely forgoing playing videogames during the last few months of the fall semester with the hope of being able to binge the games I have been wanting to play up here, I have barely touched any of them. Most nights and weekends I watch movies in the theatre, play sports, demolish anyone who dares challenge me in a game of crib, or hanging out at the bar for the free snacks. Nonetheless, videogames or not, the vibes must be immaculate for any gaming area.

My dresser area. I bought some post cards to fill in some empty space, though I do eventually plan on mailing them out. For now, they’re decorative photos.

The view from my window from last weekend around 9am. The sun is getting so so close to rising above the horizon, and now we have twilight from 8am to around 3pm.

PHOTO DUMP:

I’ve never been one to be too sappy with my writing, especially when my family and friends and friends of family will be reading this, however, I think turning 21 in the arctic warrants a little bit of emotion. I can distinctly remember many times in my life where I would ask myself, “Where will I be in X number of years?”

Sitting on the floor of my grade 3 classroom looking at a chart of the days of the month in French and English hypothesizing what I would be like in grade 8, high school, and beyond. It all seemed so far away.

Walking back to my house through the park of our suburban neighbourhood with an empty newspaper cart thinking about what my future job will be. Newspaper delivery can’t be forever, can it?

Standing at the sandwich table of my Tim Hortons, at my wits end with working through the pandemic and online schooling desperately trying to think of a brighter future. I wonder what I’ll be like. What will I be doing? Will I remember this moment? Will I be happy? God, I hope I’m happy.

Now, I don’t think working in the arctic was even in the list of possibilities. Young, young me wanted to save the world and high school me wanted to be a professional trombonist so it was pretty slim pickings. Either way, it is fun to look back and to continue forward knowing future me will remember.

I can’t say for certain what I want to do when I eventually graduate, and I have gotten pretty comfortable knowing that current me and most definitely future me is unpredictable so I could be at the south pole or on a ship in the middle of the ocean in a couple of years, and I wouldn’t even be surprised.

I will know exactly where I will be in 2 months, however. Alberta here I come! This summer I will be working as a grassland and prairie bird field research technician with ECCC in the Canadian Wildlife Service at the Suffield National Wildlife Area (SNWA). SNWA is a 45,000-hectare protected wildlife area within the boundaries of the Canadian Forces Base Suffield near Suffield and Medicine Hat, Alberta. Despite no longer returning to Grundy Lake Provincial Park like I had originally planned, I am incredibly excited to embark on a whole new journey with possibly more blog posts to come in the summer months.

Thank you to everyone who has supported me thus far, and for Simin and Kendrick for staying up 🙂