“When I was done with University, I applied to every single school district in the lower mainland looking for a job. When West Vancouver offered me a job, I had to take it so I moved out. I didn’t even think twice about it. Moving from Abbotsford where I grew up my entire life to the North shore was quite a change. It was quite a change in location, in lifestyle, and just moving away from friends and families, everything I knew to a completely new place, that was really challenging. I had to look at myself, and what I was doing with that.
I know, for my professional life I had to take the job, I couldn’t be stuck in the Fraser Valley doing the same job all the time so I had to move out and had to pursue it. Trying to find a place to live, trying to find a vehicle, trying to find all these different things was a challenge I had to face but it was a good challenge because I knew I was pursuing something professionally that was going to better myself.
Sports and athletics help me get past that. Working at the Canucks Autism Network, working at the school, along with my athletics, at those places where you have something in common with people, you can make friends. To me, it was meeting those people who were like-minded, people who were into sports, into athletics. Weightlifting is a very individual sport but also very ‘team’ in the sense of, all my friends are in weightlifting, all those I talk to are in weightlifting so a lot of my life was training and being around these people.” – Joey Balzer, Olympic Weighlifter. (3/6)
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