City Living

I’ve been a big How I Met Your Mother (HIMYM) fan for almost two years. There’s something nice about getting into a series this late, you get to watch 4 seasons of episodes and you’re still in for a few more years. The reasons I love this show are quite plentiful; the character interactions, the clever and hilarious writing, the way Marshall (Jason Segel) laughs at inside jokes on screen making it more engaging, the fact that they still have inside jokes from the first and second season. I could go on about it for some time but let’s just say that this show is one of the highlights of my week and a recent episode made me realize a few things about myself, some stuff I hadn’t considered in years. 

Shit, do these guys ever age?! Alyson Hannigan looks like she just got back from Band Camp!

I used to watch Friends religiously, man that show was addictive and funny. Chandler and Joey were my favorites, the original bromance (for my childhood anyways). One thing this show inspired was my intention to someday live in a big city in a cool apartment with friends nearby. I mean, these guys were all in their 30’s and while I get that it’s a show, my trips to Vancouver have revealed that the lifestyle is exactly what I’ve been looking for. This living style is still a big thing for me, a significant dream I would like to fulfill and for the longest time I had forgotten why I was drawn to city living in the first place, until about two years ago.


When I describe HIMYM to my friends I usually say, “it’s a new and improved version of Friends.” I mean, they live in New York, they kind of date each other within their circle, one of them is always getting women to sleep with him, Ted/Ross are both neurotic expert geeks in their field of study (I think their professions are pretty cool actually), two of the characters end up getting married with no love interest in the other characters and have a baby on the way (friends did the marriage much later in the show), they live in New York in a gorgeous apartment, there’s no Phoebe equivalent but I think Robin and Lily have aspects of Phoebe that more than make up for it. The list goes on… and the first thing I really noticed was that this show made me want to live in the big city again, but HIMYM did one thing for me that Friends didn’t, they made me want to stay in the city forever.

 Robin, representing us Canadians... very accurately actually.

In the most recent episode *SPOILERS* Lily and Marshall reveal to Robin that they actually hate the suburbs and want to move to the city but their baby needs a good place to be raised. I agreed with them on that point, I mean Monica and Chandler had to leave New York, why would they stay? But Robin basically said, “if you’re happier in the city the baby will be too;” this was not expected, I was thrilled but it was completely unexpected. They decided to moved back, this was the end of the episode. Personally, I had thought raising a child in the city was best to be avoided but I was on board with this new way of thinking minutes before it was revealed in the show, I could see where it was going and liked it. I’ve been worried about my age and whether I’ll be able to move to Vancouver for the past year or so but this single episode made me realize, “You can go when you find the opportunity, until then you should enjoy what you have because you can stay in Van the rest of your life if that’s what you want!” This realization has eased a burden off my shoulders and makes me look forward to moving to Van even more than ever!


That’s it, still a day behind but working to catch up!