It’s 2009. We rang in the new year at a hotel bar in Halifax. Big Fish was playing and they were as delightful as I remember. I last saw them three years ago. I was last in Halifax three years ago. Nothing has changed since then, and yet everything has.

What has not changed: Halifax is still pretty, still vibrant and still very much a student-driven space.

What has changed: Halifax feels small. And I feel old.

Maybe it’s because I spent my formative years here, years I loved but am very much past. Maybe it’s because there are so many students running around, dressed in a style I abandoned when I got a full-time job. Maybe it’s because since moving to Toronto, I’ve held onto this idea that Halifax was perfect and a life there would be equally so and being here for this first time since graduating university showed me that’s really not the case. Halifax is a fantastic city, but as an ambitious twenty-something, living here would mean compromising a lot of professional and personal goals.

Goodbye old friend. I know our paths will cross again. (Retirement, anyone?!)

Image by rwkphotos. Licensed via Creative Commons.