# Nunavut Journal
*December 5th 2021*
I have been to Iqaluit Nunavut for about 2 weeks now.
It's hard to describe how I feel. I definitely feel better. Mixed feelings is probably the best way to put it.
My first week was really tough. Fighting a lot of negative feelings.
It really sucks when you know you are supposed to feel excited, happy and grateful about the opportunities you have, but you just can't bring yourself to genuinely feel that way.
It's never easy to get out of your comfort zone. I left the comfort of my home in Ottawa and came to the cold, strange, desolate territory of Nunavut. Even though I know the times that lie ahead of me will be full of memorable and enriching experiences, it doesn’t make settling into a new place any easier.
I miss the familiarity back home, the ease of access to everything, I miss my cat, my boyfriend, my bed. There is a lot of physical hardship in Nunavut. The Arctic is cold, windy, and dark. It doesn’t have all the things that brings comfort to us when we are down south, like fast internet, comfort foods, people we are used to. The sun sets around 2pm every day. The city is going through a water crisis currently. But who am I to complain? This is the reality that the local inuits and non-inuits have to confront every day. I am so fortunate and lucky to be here, be part of this way of living. So even though those are legitimate thoughts and concerns, I refused to acknowledge them, I did not talk about them, because I don’t want to be the one to complain.
Work is new and scary too. No room to pull old tricks - everything is different here: disease presentation, scope of work, EMR, staff, logistics. Even though I am doing family medicine work, it feels as though I'm learning everything anew; and that’s destabilizing. My first day of clinic ran nearly 1 hour late because I struggled to sort things out. What's more disconcerting is the inuit patients. To put it frankly, I was overwhelmed by sad stories almost every day. But I feel inadequate to talk about them. Who am I to judge their lives? Am I even allowed to say I feel sorry, sorrow, uneasiness? Am I part of the problem? Those are the questions I ask, and feelings I am constantly trying to digest.
I guess I didn’t realize that I could allow myself to feel differently than what I think im supposed to feel. I can genuinely be uncomfortable to be in a new place; feelings are feelings. You cant hide them forever, nor will they be constant forever. In fact, very soon, those initial negative feelings changed. With little daily miracles, I am beginning to find myself at ease with my new temporary home for the next 2 months.
The daily miracles are made up of each and every new, interesting, kind person that I meet. What is a place, a memory, or an experience without its people? Especially in a curious and special place like Nunavut, there is often a story behind each person who was brought here. By meeting and talking to people, I realize that I am not the only who felt the way I did in the beginning. Yeah, the arctic is harsh in itself, it's no fun unless you get out of there and make it fun. A locum doctor shared with me that he also didn't feel particularly excited the first 2 weeks he was here. He even thought about cutting his trip short, and pondering that this may be his last time coming up here. And of course, the thoughts changed course as he met new people, rekindled old connections, and found meaning in his work that brought him back here and again over the last 2 years.
> "If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we are not really living."
Growth is hard. Nobody ever said it was going to be easy. Growth demands a temporary surrender of security. It may mean a giving up of familiar but limiting patterns.
As Dostoevsky put it,
> "Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most." The real fear should be of the opposite course."