I fully expected moving to France to change my life…my perceptions, day-to-day routines, surroundings (I mean, duh, right?). But what I didn’t expect was that it would also change my relationship with time.
Almost immediately, I sensed a shift. Like time as I knew it had expanded. Not to some absurd amount, but like muscles stretching back to their full length. Time started passing in a way that it felt like it always should have. Not too slow. Not too fast. But just right.
But with this expansion in time also comes something else: learning how to exist inside it.
And I guess it makes sense. After spending months planning my life, I get to finally live it. But living it moves at a completely different pace than planning.
Planning was somehow both slow and chaotic at the same time. Not a day seemed to go by where there weren’t details to coordinate or problems to solve. There was always this feeling that I was preparing for life instead of actually living it. And I hated that. It made the move feel even higher stakes because I had convinced myself that once I got there, everything would finally slow down.
And it did.
Life here is slower (and without the chaos, thank god!). The urgency that defined the past year of my life is gone, and in its place is a sort of de-escalation period. Going from having a million tabs open in my brain to just a couple is an adjustment.
And it’s not boredom, or emptiness, or dissatisfaction. It’s just…different.
When you have a goal, you know what you need to do to meet it. And whether or not it’s entirely in your control (which it almost never is), at least you have the plan. Something to work toward. Something to organize your days around.
And with that comes a certain structure. Even when the process is difficult or feels overwhelming, there is comfort in knowing what you’re moving toward.
But when the goal is finally met, what do you do?
Do you immediately replace it with something new? Or do you allow yourself to sit with the achievement you spent so much time working toward?
Those are some of the questions I’m grappling with now. But my gut tells me they don’t need answering right away. Perhaps they’re just the result of old programming to always be productive, always be moving, always be working toward the next thing.
Maybe it’s enough to let them exist unanswered for a while and trust that the life that unfolds in the meantime is the life that’s meant to be lived.
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