Lauzun and 2025
As I write this, a new year has begun, and I am in a new city but before we talk about that I want to tell you a little bit about the place I just left.
Lauzun, France has been my home for the last three months. My friends Jason and Raina had done a YouTube video about this village on their channel Baguette Bound. Here is a link to that video if you want to check it out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDLnSGZQyGo
It was that video that made me want to explore what it might be like to live in such a small French village. I must say the day I drove into town I really wondered what I had been thinking. Paolo and I had gone out for a walk that day and within 15 minutes or so we had pretty much seen the entire village, even all the hidden little walkways (which are cool since there are several that create short cuts to get from one spot to another in the village). On that very first walk was also the first time that I had heard English spoken in public since I had arrived in France about 5 weeks earlier.
Those voices that day turned out to be Keith and Liza, a British couple who had moved to the area 20+ years ago and opened the café in Lauzun. As it turned out that same café was a regular gathering place for other English speakers who live in the area, mostly British with a few Americans. Only open a few days a week it was a great place to grab a coffee or pop in for a fabulous dinner. It was going to this place that allowed me to meet so many other people who lived nearby but mostly English speakers.
I continue to notice that if I am in a place for more than a week people will approach Paolo and I out on our walks and start a conversation usually asking what kind of dog Paolo is or how old he is. Paolo has been the best thing for me to have the opportunity to meet and speak with French people.
In this area is also the Dordogne Ladies Club International, a club for English speaking women in the area to make friends and support each other in the process of integrating to life in France. This group has given me regular coffee outings and monthly luncheons but also the ability to ask the quick “how do I….” or “where do I find…” type of things that come up all the time.
As winter has descended on the Dordogne and some weeks have been nothing but gray and rain, I have really missed warm and sunny and felt torn between having a social network and having the weather that makes me happy.
So, as I began contemplating where I would go next and knowing that for now, I need to stay close to this area since I had upcoming appointments at the Prefecture as a part of my visa process, I need to be within driving distance of Bordeaux.
Because the Dordogne Ladies Club also has a group that meets in Perigueux and I had a chance to come to Perigueux for a lunch back in November I was intrigued by the city with its walking old city center and Boukies, the English language bookstore owned by an American, Dave who is married to a French woman. Back in November I had popped into Boukies and was instantly welcomed, I found myself wanting to explore this place a bit more so at the beginning of January I moved to Perigueux for a month to test it out. As I meet so many lovely people in each place that I have gone to, it has become harder and harder to know that I still don’t feel like I have found MY place.
As I sit here today, the middle of January, I have not decided where I will go in February, but I know I need to. I would like to go back and explore further south, a bit warmer and sunnier but at the same time while just this week I completed my first Prefecture appointment I am waiting for the notification of my second. I am beginning to understand why so many people when they make the move to France pick a place and stick to it for their first year, it does make the administration easier however I have always kind of felt that if I spent that much time in one place I would naturally establish a life there and not really want to uproot that after that first year. Now with my shorter-term nomadic approach I am still finding a pull to not wanting to give up what I have created to keep looking but at the same time not wanting to wake up to everything covered in frost and just wanting to huddle inside and wait for spring.
I had originally given myself 2025 to continue this journey to find my spot before buying a place of my own but as I have continued to move from place to place and contended with the imperfections of each Airbnb (no outdoor space, can’t get warm, doors that won’t lock, terrible beds and very steep winding stairs, etc., etc.) I do find myself craving my place, a place that I can nest and create a space that I am excited to be in each day. It is this draw that has me wanting to now find my place by the end of the summer, so I can put some roots down and work on creating a life that I am not going to leave behind. But for today, I need to decide where I am going to go next month.
As I do every year between Christmas and New Years, I did a review of my goals and plans for the year wrapping up and what I accomplished. Given that when I made the decision to pursue my dream and move to France, I basically threw out my original plan for 2024. I looked at it from the lens of, am I happy with where I am right now and the fact is that I am very happy, I feel a different quality and slowness to my life that I didn’t realize was missing and I am so happy that I found.
When I looked at what I wanted to create in 2025, I knew that I wanted my theme to be co-creation, I want more of my decisions and choices to be led from spirit rather than from my over thinking mind but when I began to map out each month I also knew that I only wanted to focus on one thing. I crave more simplicity to allow for the pouring of myself into a single thing and not a giant list of things as I have previously done. So my plan for 2025 has some basic desires that are always present like continuing my French language practice, focusing on building a life in France and continuing to stock money away for the purchase of a property but in addition to those ever present things I only selected a single thing for each month such as implementing intermittent fasting for January or mandala painting in February. My simplest annual plan yet, something tells me that 2026 will be simpler yet as I crave more focused attention to what is important to me.
Finally, in the process of my 2025 planning I decided to write a paragraph of how I wanted to feel by the end of 2025, that paragraph I feel is my north start for the year. If something is supportive of that paragraph, I will give it time and attention, if it doesn’t, I won’t. This is something I am just testing out, but I feel like this is my way of letting spirit and my heart lead my life rather than my mind. Stay tuned for how this experiment goes.
Below I am sharing the questions that I am contemplating as I continue this journey of where to make a nest and build a life in France in the hopes that perhaps you too may find some value in contemplating these questions in your own life either in your notebook, morning shower or daily commute.
- How do I stay present to where I am?
- What is the feeling that makes a place feel like home?
- How is a place good enough?
- How can you lead a more heart driven life?
Finally, some breadcrumbs of things I am working on.
- Exploring how I can share my planning experience with the rest of the world
- Connecting with Writing Wisdom again
- Exploring my own creativity
More to come on all these things as well as my continued goldilocks journey in France.
I blog because I love the process of questioning my life, questioning my beliefs and questioning the stories that I tell myself. If you want to question yourself, then subscribing to my email list will ensure you have an opportunity to do that. I blog about once a month so you will not receive a ton of emails from me, only what I hope to be the best questions that we can ask ourselves to move our life toward our dreams each day.
In love,
Renée
Stay up-to-date on the writing journey!
From behind-the-scene stories to life lessons - you'll hear it all!
Thank you for subscribing! I've sent you an email with more - see you there.