Choosing a dream!

Finally deciding to go after your dreams is not for the faint of heart. In March, I dove in head first to the path that through a series of synchronicities laid itself out in front of me. My dream is to immigrate to France, to live there and possibly one day have citizenship.

In those initial steps there was a part of me that at each step kept waiting for something to go wrong, for something to reel me back in and agree with the punitive voice in my head that wants me to believe that while other people get to follow their dreams, that is not available to me, no matter how much I might want it.

I decided not to listen to that voice but to challenge it. If I am not meant to do this then at some step in the process, I will be stopped was the argument I made to that voice. I dove into each step, making my monthly project plan with big sticky notes one for each month of everything that I would need to accomplish. Building my French business plan was the first step, I dove into this in late March. By April the business documentation was ready, and I shifted into gathering all of the other documents to complete the visa application.

Then I decided to move out of my apartment early. To be nomadic, for this summer. This meant that for me, May became the month of getting rid of as many things as possible. Deciding what would go to France now and what would eventually go later and then the rest I needed to get rid of. This process was an immediate lesson in the emotional attachment to things. The things that I had acquired in these last few years didn’t mean as much to me, the things that I had acquired during the travels with my beloved I knew I was not at all ready to depart with and likely never would be which was okay.

When I started this process, I assumed that most of my things were going to go into storage at least for this first year of living abroad. At the time I told myself, that way if I was not happy, I still have everything and can just come back and pick up where I left off. Then I decided one day to offer a few furniture items to my ladies’ group and when they responded so positively, I got to feel what it was like to give something. Like my sofa to a dear friend who needed a new sofa for her office because she had always dreamt of having a white sofa, it just felt good to give that to her. That started me on a journey of offering way more things to those that I care about, if they needed it, if it could help them in some way, it felt good to give it along. Because of this process at the end of May I was able to move out of my apartment with 8 big plastic tubs of items going into storage. Those tubs will eventually make their way to France. A few boxes in storage that I just had to give myself some grace around that I was not ready to decide whether they would go to France or be given away. I then moved into an Airbnb with 3 suitcases, Paolo and all of his things.

The first day in the Airbnb, I suddenly felt like the process that I had just completed downsizing everything needed to begin again but now I was in one third of my previous space, it was all helping me to downsize even further to be ready to be truly nomadic by the time I leave the US (August) which by the time of this publishing is done but more to come on that.

I was on plan with all tasks complete and while I still had a lot to do before I left, I was ready, I had my plan, and I was working my plan.

At the beginning of June, I flew to Washington DC where I had my visa interview and turned over my dossier to substantiate that I knew what I am doing to start a business in France and if that business didn’t work for some reason that I could support myself and not be a drain on the French system.