Podcast: The road to Paris started with a few big questions
Photo courtesy of IOCListen to the podcast interview I did recently: It’s half an hour… a nice walking podcast.
The podcast covers my path from a small town to the artsy life in Paris.
It’s a circuitous path, but it all seems so nicely laid out when you’re yapping about it in a podcast.
Speaking of making it in Paris… Are you loving the Paris Olympics prep coverage? Oooh those athletes are showing up all shiny and smiling with their rolling suitcases.
Locals are equal parts excited and tormented by the Olympics coming to town. I am watching all the gates and fences going up to corral crowds so that people have to get a code scanned on their phones just to go where they usually go without all the chaos. It makes me feel glad to NOT BE THERE. In fact, I’m hosting my Paris buddies chez moi who are running far far away from the events.
Because Paris belongs to us, but Paris Olympics belongs to someone else.
It got me thinking about the long road to Paris. For the athletes, that’s a lot of early morning practices and late night ice packs. Most of us expats have our arrival stories. And me? Well, you’ll have to listen to the podcast.
But I can tell you here and now that my long road to Paris was all about asking myself some big questions:
“What is the biggest life I could create for myself?”
Toronto, then Los Angles, then Paris.
How can I make money through writing?
At first the question was as a copywriter in advertising, then creating the Paris Letters to sell on Etsy, then the books.
The hierarchy of events makes so much sense peering back from the future.
Now I’m asking myself other questions. There is part of me planted in letter writing but also looking ahead. Another letter series? Painting Paris storefronts? Lean into the book writing? Courses? Something else?!??!?! Something more, something less?
More like this on my Etsy Shop
The idea should always be to follow through on a vision. (Speaking of, watch this heart wrenching video from Sabrina Ward Harrison)
That’s the trick, right? To follow through on a vision?
To see the vision.
Add curiosity on how to make it happen.
Mix in a fair bit of relentlessness to keep at it and finish it.
So if you are in this swirl, of not knowing exactly what that vision is, or which vision of many to move forward with, or wondering why you finish statements these days with IS and WITH… you aren’t alone.
Hanging out with all those questions swirling around our orbits is all part of the process. Loads of answers, no answers. Seems the multitude of good ideas are bouncing each other out of pole position and nothing gets done. It’s an uncomfortable place to be. Sometimes the only way forward is to look for clues in the past.
Back in LA, life was HARD for a VERY LONG TIME. Figuring out how to make friends, finding my way around, asking people to spell “La Cienega” and “Cahuenga Pass” when they gave me directions, driving around all of LA in right hand turns, freeway rage, blinding bright days, skinny culture, layoffs, election mayhem.
So as far as LA goes, not much has changed.
I even had to look up La Cienega and Cahuenga right now to write this.
But holy moly, I have changed. In those LA days I had a lot of questions swirling around in my orbit. They led to Paris… and led so far beyond Paris that now my friends FROM Paris are coming to visit me AWAY from Paris. But still, as I watch the Olympics this week, I’ll be looking at all the backgrounds behind the athletes, revisiting my ghostly self who spent her days walking around the city with questions swirling around her head. I’ll send her good vibes, knowing she’ll figure it out.
