Five years ago this month I landed in Canada. July of 2017. Two suitcases, my family, and a one way plan. A few months before that, I had sold my share of WebEleven, the digital agency I co-founded in Brazil back in 2006. Eleven years of my life were in that company. I sold my part and bet everything on this dream.
There is a nice coincidence in the timing. 2017 was the year Canada celebrated its 150th birthday, fireworks, red maple leaves everywhere, the whole country in a party mood. I always tell people I did not plan it, but I like to think the country and I both started a new chapter that year. Canada at 150, me at one. One of us had better fireworks.
But the dream was much older than 2017. Today I want to tell the full story, because I think it says something about dreams in general.
Germany, 2008
In 2008 I had a possibility to immigrate. Not to Canada, to Germany. I was working in media technology in Brazil, I had a good portfolio, and I entered a selection process with a big digital agency, one with offices across Germany and also one in Spain. It was just a process, nothing guaranteed, but it was moving forward. I remember studying basic German phrases at night and imagining a new life in Europe. The interviews went well. I started to believe it was happening.
Then September 2008 arrived.
If you were not following the news at that time, here is the short version. Lehman Brothers, one of the biggest investment banks in the world, collapsed. When a bank that size falls, trust between banks disappears. Credit froze worldwide, almost overnight. Companies could not borrow money, so they stopped spending. Europe entered recession fast. And Germany, an economy built on exports, was one of the most impacted countries, because when the world stops buying, an export country stops selling.
Companies froze hiring everywhere. My selection process was paused in the middle. Not cancelled, paused, which is somehow worse. I kept checking my inbox for months, hoping. Then the email finally arrived, but not the one I dreamed about. The company was making cuts and doing layoffs, and the process would not continue. The move would stay only an idea.
I was sad, but I told myself the classic phrase. “It was not the right moment. I will do it later.”
Then life happened
Here is the dangerous part of the story, and it has nothing to do with banks.
WebEleven, the agency I co-founded, grew. We got more clients, then bigger clients, then more projects than we could handle. I was a founder, so every year there was a reason to stay one more year. A big contract was starting. A key person was leaving and I had to cover. We were finally making good money and walking away felt crazy.
The dream froze again. But this time nobody could blame Lehman Brothers. This time the dream froze because things were going well.
I learned something important in those years. Comfort is the quietest way to give up something. Failure is loud, you notice it. Comfort just whispers “next year” every year, and you nod, and a decade passes. Between 2008 and 2017 I never officially gave up on living abroad. I just never did it. There is no real difference between the two.
Why 2017
So what changed?
A few things came together. I value the effort of Brazilian people deeply, they work hard in conditions that people here can not imagine. But I was unsatisfied with the politics of those years. And as an entrepreneur, I was starting to see something that bothered me much more. To survive and grow a business in that environment, sooner or later you feel the pressure to play along with the system in some way. I looked at that road and I knew it went against my real values. I will not give details, it is not the point of this post. The point is that one day I understood that the answer for me was somewhere else.
I was also turning a corner personally. I had spent my whole career in Brazil. Jovem Pan, Bandeirantes, then my own company. I knew how things worked there. Maybe too well. I wanted to see if I was a good entrepreneur and developer, or only good inside my comfort zone.
The bet
So in early 2017 I sold my share of WebEleven to my partners. It was strange to sign those papers. That company was not just a business for me. It was a dream I helped build from day one, from nothing. Like a baby I watched learn to walk. And like every child that becomes an adult, one day it has to walk without you. The company kept going without me, which is exactly what should happen. It still hurt, but not the ego kind of hurt. The kind you feel when something you love no longer needs you.
The plan for Canada was honest and a little scary. Come for international experience. Learn a new work culture. Study. Restart a career in a second language, and let me be honest here, my English at that time was bad. Really bad. And I was not coming alone. My wife came with me, and our daughter was only five years old.
Many people think the immigrant life is easy, like you pick a country and life sorts itself out. It was our choice and I am not complaining. I am just being sincere. It is a real challenge, especially in the beginning. The strange part is that I only felt the true size of that pressure when I stepped into the airport, already in Canada, holding our suitcases and my daughter’s small hand. There was no plan B anymore.
In Brazil I was the founder, the guy with the answers. In Canada I was the guy asking people to repeat the question slower, please. My first winter here in Alberta I learned that minus thirty is not a number, it is a feeling.
It took time. New country, new credentials, new everything. But it worked. Today I am a Senior Software Developer at Benevity here in Calgary, building software that moves real money to real causes. Twenty years of experience finally being used in the international career I imagined back in 2008.
What the frozen dream taught me
Here is the lesson I keep coming back to.
My dream froze twice. Once by a global crisis I could not control. Once by my own success, which I could control but did not want to see. And it still came true. Nine years late, in a different country, in a different language than I expected. But true.
If you are waiting for the perfect moment to make a big change, I have bad news from someone who waited nine years. The perfect moment is a story we tell ourselves. In 2008 the world economy said no. From 2009 to 2016 my own comfort said not yet. If I had kept listening, I would still be saying next year, right now, today.
Waiting for the perfect moment usually means never. The good enough moment, with some savings, a rough plan, and the courage to be a beginner again, that moment exists much more often. I took mine in 2017.
Five years later, I am writing this from Calgary, in my second language (of course, with help from Grammarly to fix my grammar ), with no regrets about the bet. Only one regret about the timing. I wish I had understood earlier that a frozen dream does not die. It just waits for you to stop finding reasons.
If you have one of those frozen dreams in a drawer somewhere, maybe this is your reminder to check if it is still alive. Mine was.
Pax et bonum.