postcard from bordeaux #1: about a list and the start of a new adventure

And so it begins. After a grand total of 30 minutes of sleep and a rather uninspiring flight, I am now finally here, sitting at the Seine, the Louvre on the other side of the river while the seagulls are flying. It’s a bit chillier than I thought it would be but as soon as the sun comes out, it warms me up quickly. For a moment, I feel extremely zen. This is exactly the trip I have been dreaming about since Christmas.

Back then I was in the middle of breaking up with my job – yes, this sounds dramatic, but it was exactly how I felt about it – all the emotions at once. Sadness, resentment, shame, excitement, pride, hope. I knew it was the right move, something I had to do for myself, for my mental health, for my self-worth. But I wasn’t sure what was going to happen after. Would anybody want to hire me again? What if my position at my old company, in the team that I loved so incredibly much, was just a lucky strike? If I am actually not capable of anything and from now on everybody would see that I am a fraud? My already fragile concept of my own self-worth was crumbling more and more. At the same time I knew I couldn’t stay. I was struggling too hard with my mental health. Didn’t want to get up in the morning anymore. Thought I wasn’t capable of anything anymore. While in reality, I simply didn’t want to do what I was doing anymore. (I didn’t want to accept that fact back then, though.)

And then there was the list. The list I wrote one Monday morning, about ten months ago, full to the bursting of the things I wanted to do if I didn’t have that particular job or a full schedule in general, the things that make me happy. Things that have been standing at the sideline for way too long but were desperately pushing to come out, to claim their well-deserved time and space in my life. Gardening and writing, traveling and listening to people’s stories. Reading, riding bikes. Spending more time with family and friends. Learning to design gardens, drawing and taking a writing course. This list made me happy just looking at it. It made me all giddy about the future for the first time in months, maybe even years. And when I finally quit last November, so did the thought of a longer trip to France.

So here I am, five months later, in Paris, about to take a train to Bordeaux, the Paris of the South, as they call it, where I will spend the next three weeks. I don’t know what I am looking for in France. Myself? Trust in myself and the process of life? Inspiration? The dedication to write which I am in desperate need of? The freedom to just be, without schedules, meetings and responsibilities? Piece and quiet to hear myself a little louder again? Love? Self-love? A new adventure, full of deep impressions, viewpoints, stories? It’s probably a little of all of this. In the end, I want just want to be somewhere else for a little bit. Give myself space to be and do whatever I feel like. To live out the serendipitous moments that you only experience when your mind is quiet and calm enough to notice them. I am here and that’s enough for now. Trusting the process and all that fun stuff.

Trusting the process fits quite well as the general theme for this trip, since I am not one for proper preparation most of the time: I only booked my flight three days ago – and the Airbnb yesterday. Going with the unprepared or rather “trusting the process” theme, Bordeaux is a mystery to me as well. I’ve got a couple of spots outside the city marked on Google Maps, courtesy of Lisa and Yannick, who are spending most their summers here and whose passionate arguments as to why Bordeaux is better than Paris are the reason why I am shortly going to take the train down South, instead of staying in Paris. But that’s it. I know nothing else about the city I’ll be staying in. Which makes it that much more exciting to me. Three weeks of exploring and finding special spots, I’m coming! Get ready for stories from the patio, instead of stories from the balcony over the next weeks!

And stories to tell there will be for sure. It’s only day one and I already have a bunch of things to say and talk about. Stay tuned for my first postcard from Bordeaux or: a traveling reality check.