Dirty 30.

Time has been flying by and it’s amazing that i have been home 2 months already.

Though, that said, much has happened in such a short space of time. A giant ball of anxiety and excitement has been tumultuously bubbling away in my insides, ready to spill over into India, into a new business, into a new home, into another decade of life, etc etc etc.

Yes, i am turning 30 at the end of this month, and will be conveniently flying away from this concept that very day on a plane to India.
On the matter of turning 30, i’m not sure i have anything much to say. Nor do i have a response for the multitude of questions regarding my satisfaction levels for the life lived so far. I am what i am, and as i never really gave myself any expectations of where i was going and what i was to achieve, i am neither where i thought i would be, nor where i expected myself to be.

Alls there is to say is that i sure would have regretted NOT doing most of the things i have done.

I may not have a lover, a home, a job or a bank account balance (eeek!), but i guess i don’t have to live with any repercussions of these accumulations either.

I’m a free, excited blank canvas at 30, and that’s about the most i could want to ask for.

And in the meantime, i’ll happily proclaim to be 29 for another 2 weeks, thank-you!

Stella gets her groove back…soon!

i just thought it more than appropriate to drop a line and tell you that Australia has not swallowed me whole… yet!

I have been feeling really guilty for not updating you on events recently, but the truth is, if there was something thrillingly beautiful to tell you about, i’d have done so before now.

It’s a weird concept, fitting back into an old life, trying to make things new but being met with a hell of a lot of resistance. Harder than i imagined.

Luckily for me, i was literally handed a job on a silver platter the moment i got home, which has been an absolute lifesaver and really gave me a sense of having my feet planted on the ground again. (Not so much in a down to earth way as a way to stop me floating through life!!) So, i’ve just been working, and eating, and breathing, and kind of just holding on till i get my groove on! It’s amazing how much it already feels like Paris never happened yet at the same time, like a lifetime has passed.

But i’m feeling good, and feeling like things are starting to slide into place here, albeit a bit more slowly than i’d prefer! I’ve never been one for waiting.

I’m now back where i started and toying with the same ideas and dreams that i had before i decided to up and leave in the first place. I wanted to start a business, and i went to Paris to get some skills and experience. I’ve got them now, and yet i’m still too scared to jump in and begin something. The idea of going back into the corporate world and climbing my way up seemed an awesome idea when i was flat broke and hungry in Paris, but now that it’s at my fingertips? Boring!! But yet i find myself paralysed to make the jump.

It’s exciting thinking about what i can build, but then in the same breath i think about what i might lose….. freedom to travel, freedom to explore other cities and other lives. When you have your own thing, do you become kind of rooted to the spot? Could be hard for a carny like myself, or maybe the ups and downs and highs and lows of creating something for myself will satiate my desire for chaos. Here’s hoping for the latter!

With all that said though, you will be pleased (not surprised!) that i’ve already planned my next escape. I’m off to India in a few weeks!! Excited, scared, anxious, delighted – i’m feeling all of it, and best of all, there’s a big wedding and i’ll be able to catch up with some friends i left behind in the city of light.

No name will be there, and we’ll be taking a little holiday too which, i imagine, in between Delhi belly and drop toilets, will still be absolutely delightful. Now when the hell is he going to leave the pages of this blog once and for all?!

I miss you…

The week leading up to leaving was a very difficult one. For everyone, i hazard a guess.

It was one of the most confusing and stressful times i have been through, both emotionally and physiologically, and it’s unlike me to get myself in such a mess. Before now, i thought that i was actually pretty good at dealing with stress.

It was probably just one of your classic meltdowns.

Making friends now, at the age of (almost!) 30, is still a relatively easy thing to do, despite what others say. The problem is, that most of these people are not wildly inappropriate choices for friends. Rather, they are people you have attracted through the very nature of being who you are. That’s what makes it so hard to say goodbye.

It’s true that the same thing happened when leaving Australia to begin with – leaving people close to you. But the difference is in the conviction that life in my home town had the ability to be re-assumed, just the way it was, whenever i chose to do so.

In Paris, that life will never be the same. Even if i choose to go back (which is seeming rather appealing right now), it’s likely friends there will have moved on, or inherited new lives, ones which don’t have much potential to involve you any more.

And it wasn’t just saying goodbye to people, that was difficult.

I ended up walking around the city saying things like, “it’s the last time i am ever going to wait in line at this boulangerie” or “i can’t believe i am never going to see the sun hit my building like that again”. One of my friends said i was being so dramatic it sounded like i was dying. I even said at one stage that it was the last time i will ever be at a market. I think i just blankly forgot that these things (like food and sunlight) exist outside France.

At the end of it, i just wanted to get my fix of the regular things i knew i would miss – like cooking (too much) dinner with friends, unbuttoning my jeans, and passing out from overeating in front of a movie. Or picnic-ing on the canal and waking up with an arse so bruised it’ll be several days until you can even sit on the couch. Going out with the intention of dancing all night at Le Memphis, yet being too drunk and tired to make it there at the end of dinner. The routine.

I didn’t want to make it any more difficult for people by needing something more than the usual. I didn’t want to put pressure on people to provide me with some kind of idealised version of my reality just for the sake of closure. (Though i will admit to having done this a little, to which i feel a little remorse. ‘No names’ mentioned.)

Anyway, it’s all seemingly gotten under my skin. I guess now it’s just about finding a way to keep it all there, happily living inside me, without having to invest in expensive topical applications and pills to prevent any unwanted side effects. Like loss, or despair.

Lol, i still sound like i’m dying.

In the end, i chose to go. I chose to say goodbye to the city, to friends and (new) family, and to people i came to love. Very much.

So i can only complain so much.

Leaving Las Vegas

There is an actual reason why i have neglected to write lately.

It’s because i don’t want to see the things needed to be said in print. It makes them become something i have to deal with.

The truth is, i have decided to go back to Australia.

For reals.

I’m not actually sad at all about the decision. I made a choice, i am happy with the choice and i know it’s the right thing for me right now.

Though however sure one is, it doesn’t take away the sick, hollow feeling following me around in my stomach. It’s been there for weeks and i can’t work out what it is exactly.

But you know i’m gonna try and analyse it right!?

Ever since i’ve been here in France, it’s felt like i’ve had these two parallel lives, running simultaneously, only on opposite sides of the world. I never felt like not being in Australia meant that particular life stopped. But now, not being in France makes me realise that there’s a very real chance that this life will stop. The life i’ve made for myself here, well, i’m never going to get that back. I’m never going to be here living the same simple yet complicated existence, never going to have all the same people here at the same time. This life is seemingly over.

I know it’s up to me to keep my friendships alive, which i have no doubt i will try (very hard!) to do, but i just can’t shake the feeling that some of them needed more time. It’s hard to say goodbye to important people in your life, with the possibility that you’ll never share the same city again.

And then there are the people to whom it is too late to say the things you’ve been wanting to say (or perhaps the things that you didn’t realise you wanted to say, until now) because saying them now feels a little futile and pointless.

Right now i have all the time in the world. Work has finished, i’m winding down and trying to get everything ready to leave. But even though i’m on holidays, i find myself unable to relax, even for one minute.

I feel excitement for the move, to be sure, but at this very minute i just feel a huge sense of loss.

Writer’s Block? Me?

I’ve been sitting here in front of a blank screen and a flashing cursor for far too long this morning. I just have no idea what to write! I think there are just too many convoluted thoughts racing through my head that i cannot process one and put it down on the page.

Most people say writing helps then to clarify their thoughts. I think i must be the opposite!

The weather’s changing for the better, and lots of other things are changing too. Whether or not they are for the better i think it’s really too soon to tell!

Stay tuned…..

Sex and This City…

It’s become clear to me that the majority of my readers are pretty much only interested in the state of my love life.

And fair enough. Someone’s got to be i suppose. So thanks Keith, for bringing my lack of ability in attracting Frenchmen to my attention.

The truth is, my poor little heart is being pulled in a million different directions at the moment – north, south, what-have-you. It’s very confusing.

But what i will say is that i’m not sure to be so convinced by the sincerity of Frenchmen to date. That’s not to say that they don’t exist, i hope, it’s just to say that i certainly haven’t run into any…. that are sincere and available!

Not least after this weekend’s novelty of being comically and ardently seduced by No Name at a party, whilst at the very same time, spying him asking other women for their number, repeatedly.

C’est comme ca, for the most part of the time.

When i give someone my heart, i give them the whole thing – which isn’t necessarily wise but it certainly prevents me (most of the time!) from putting it into the wrong hands. And so far, the right hands haven’t come along.

But never fear dear reader (Keith),  it doesn’t stop me from putting some of me into the wrong hands occasionally!

😉

The Art of Happiness

I found my iPod today.

It had been missing since January.

It was in the pocket of my leather jacket. An interesting reminder that it has been too cold even to wear a leather jacket in a long time. And an encouraging reminder that summer will indeed arrive once again. Eventually.

What was an even nicer find, when i plugged in my earphones at long last, was the absolute rush of joy that flooded into my body when i heard Regina Spektor coming through to me once again. It must have been the last thing i was listening to – before it got too cold to wear the jacket anymore.

And it instantly brought me back to last summer.

I realised in that moment, sitting in the metro, that over the last summer in Paris – in my tiny little studio under the rooftops of Belleville, with barely enough money to feed myself – was one of the happiest times of my life so far.

I think a tear actually ran down the side of my face while i was contemplating what it was about that Summer that made it such a time of happiness. I’d like to capture it in a bottle and use it again when i’m in need.

There was nothing particularly exciting about that summer. It was such an idle, dreamy and simple time. I was relaxed, there was sun, a lot of free time,  i was getting to know Mr No Name (well i had fingers in a few pies at that time), and i think it may have actually been the first time i’ve ever had my own place, now that i think about it.

I don’t know if it’s one of those things in particular, something else entirely or if it’s just a melange of all the nice things above, but it was really, really nice.

And when i heard that music coming into my mind again for the first time since then, it gave me a renewed sense of what i should be aiming to bring into, or to keep in, my life – and now i feel like the path is getting exciting again.

A double win for Poulette today.

And for all mankind as well 😉

How to Attract An Australian

I noticed someone ended up on this blog the other day from having googled ‘how to attract Australian men’.

And to you, i say, “get back to me when you find out”.

But what i can offer is this. Unlike French men, who seem to go for anyone who seems like a bitch, i think in Australia it is rather the opposite. Ah ha, that’s right – be nice. I’m not sure if it is actually as easy as that, but it is certainly the essential ingredient.

To you, dear google-er (is that a word yet?), if you read this, and you are indeed a nice person, you should have no trouble attracting yourself an Australian.

Let me know when it happens 😉

Pot Calling The Kettle Fat?

Sorry to get all political like on you all, but i have to share the funniest thing i have heard all week.

On the matter of Nicolas Sarkozy, this week, Gaddafi apparently said in an interview something along the lines of “yes, Sarkozy… he is my friend, you know, but unfortunately he is crazy – he has a mental disease”.

This cracked me up.

It’s amazing that someone so completely off the planet has the clarity to see such a thing in someone else. Truly incredible.

Perhaps he is in fact superhuman enough to succeed.

I wonder whether that’s the reason France will be throwing a bomb over Gaddafi’s roof sometime this afternoon?

A Farewell to Arms

I’d like to talk about Charlie Sheen.

But i won’t. Not enough room on the INTERNET to talk about all the crazy going on there.

So instead i’ll talk about the other thing currently occupying space in my head, normally reserved for air, EATING.

Oh my good god is living in France in winter is a sheer test of will or what?

All it takes is December, January, February, a little bit of fois gras, some sneaky – still in the fridge as you cut it – cheese eating, a couple of plates of confit du canard, an entire olive baguette on a Sunday afternoon and voila – a new layer of protective fat. Just in time for Spring.

I’ve taken off my jeans and put on my leggings. I am not putting them back on until they no longer look like i’ve sprayed denim directly onto my legs.

It’s official. Poulette is on operation ‘put the cheese down’.

Or maybe operation (no) dessert storm.

Now i could do this the old-fashioned French way and cover every inch of my body in fat reducing creams and stuff my self silly with diet pills, but i’m gonna do this the plain old Anglo-Saxon way and stuff myself full of vegetable for several weeks, while salivating on the window of pattiseries and restaurants all over town.

This is really happening guys.