Woah this metaphor is freaking me out

For all those people who want to know if I plan to move back home soon
Big city love

Here's a short one for me and Montreal.

Some days waking up with Montreal is a blast. The sun is shining and the air is crisp and clean, my beautiful spacious apartment embraces me in the sunshine, I walk the dog in the park next door to my house, turn on the ordi and start figuring out what I am going to do with my day. In Montreal, I feel like I can live on nothing but affordable lodgings, dear friends, inspiration and cheap beer. Some mornings.

Other days I wake up and the inspiration is at low-ebb. I take a look at my bank account and realize that I am thirty-one and have never officially lived above what Statscan refers to as the poverty line. I eat some toast in my ragtag kitchen full of old fixtures and even older appliances, and realize I wouldn't know how to cope with a full-time job any more than I'd be able to cope with 4 figure rent.

Those mornings Montreal is a strange version of Pleasure Island, the amusement park in the Disney version of Pinocchio where the young puppet boy takes refuge in delight. Takes refuge that is, until he discovers that if he stays idle much longer he will turn into a donkey.

Montreal I love you - but sometimes I think you let me get away with too much. I need to become a grown up, a real girl. One with real commitments, a real job. Real responsibilities. Maybe we both need to take a break from each other, I need to hop out of bed, put on some clean pants and dust off my resume. You need to stop relying on Festivals and start developing some real income opportunities for people you didn't go to Cegep with you back in '75, that would be nice for all of us non-corporate (ahem) self-starters. (I refuse to use the word entrepreneur). I don't like living in a place where my hourly wage is a race to the bottom. I don't like wondering if my fellow designers feel like they have to lowball to get the clients that they really want. I don't like knowing that when I do sites for community and arts organizations, the project managers administrators and other non-technical professionals there are all still probably making just under 30k a year. That sucks Montreal and as the cost of living in this city goes up, quite frankly, it is not fair.

Montreal pull up your socks and get serious for once in your life, I don't know if you've noticed yet but all your real love interests are growing up and many of them have left you behind.