EP 90: Rebecca's Experience Flying Solo in Paris

Where to find Aimee: 

• Instagram: @vibrancenutrition
• Nutrition Coaching: vibrancenutrition.com
• Podcast on Nutrition: Blasphemous Nutrition
• Substack on Nomadic Life: NomadicNomMom

Where to find Rebecca: 

• Instagram and her life in Paris: @beseriouslyhappy
• Podcast for Interior Design-preneurs: Stuff Interior Designers Need to Know
• Biz Coaching for Interior Designers: seriouslyhappy.com
• Book on Interior Design Psychology: Happy Starts at Home

Transcript

Speaker 0:01

Welcome to Bon Jola, a podcast about two women, Amy and Rebecca, who each move from the United States to Europe to become expats. Amy to Spain and Rebecca to France. We're here to share the highs, the lows, and the logistics of this adventure. Encourage you to follow your own, move abroad dreams, and remind you that you're not alone when the going gets tough. Enjoy.

Aimee 0:24

Bon Jola, Rebecca.

Rebecca 0:26

Amy,

Aimee 0:26

I am wondering if I need to be worried about you, because this is the longest that you have been without your spouse, without your man. Well, you've got Murray

Rebecca 0:40

I got my little man.

Aimee 0:42

but that's not, that's not the same. Marie doesn't cook for you, and Marie does not engage in, um, tating conversation with you, so

Rebecca 0:52

Although I do talk to him a lot lately. Yeah, I've been exploring single hood in Paris. uh, when we started this journey, Damien was gonna be gone for 48 days, and there are 16 left.

Aimee 1:06

Okay. He's been gone longer than I thought.

Rebecca 1:09

And it's gone faster than I expected.

Aimee 1:13

But how are you?

Rebecca 1:15

Um, I have to answer that in two ways. I'm doing great if I weren't my own self, but when Damien left. I mean, for context, for people who don't know my marriage, Damien and I are joined at the hip. We love being together. We can literally spend 24 7 together for weeks and not be mad at each other. We might be like, you know, I'm gonna take a nap, but it's because we're tired, not because we're tired of each other. It's a bizarre fantasy marriage, and I hope it stays that way. But, um, within my bizarre fantasy marriage, he also does all of the cooking. All of it. And that's great because I hate being in the kitchen. I'm completely impatient with putting food into my body or the process that that takes. Um, and he's my partner in crime, so everything social that I do involves him or I'm at work. Like those are my two worlds and have been for almost 20 years now. So he's gone. I had learned how to feed myself, um, which is, that's a stupid adventure, but whatever. The cool thing, the thing I wanna share with listeners is that I filled my calendar with social for the first two weeks that he was gone. I knew if I did not do that, I would not leave my apartment. And so it gave me this really great opportunity to. Make Friends I guess is the basic way to put it.

Aimee 2:46

Awesome.

Rebecca 2:46

I used all the different apps. I used Fever and I took myself to a candlelight concert. It was Bridgeton themed. and ended up having a friend come with me last minute. I went to some, great, very iconic French places like Maxims a, Epoch Cafe that is just straight out of the movies. And if anybody comes to Paris, yes, it's on the tourist list and yes, you'll love it. Um, go to the top floor. It's just, it feels like a speakeasy up there. So I did that. My offline club that I've talked about on the podcast before I went to the Eiffel Tower, and I made a wish with 300 other people to start a coloring club, was my wish not theirs. And the person that I socialized with, a very nice young lady who calls Houston home, but is originally from Cameroon and now lives in Paris for the last eight years. She came to my coloring club because as of making the wish, I was like, well. I guess we have to make this happen. So I put it on the calendar and then she came and a couple of other people that I'd never met from the United States, but I've been telling everybody, if you're coming, I will have coffee with you. They said, we're here. I said, how do you feel about coloring? And they said, we're in, so,

Aimee 4:04

Hold on. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. hold on, hold

Rebecca 4:06

okay.

Aimee 4:06

on. So did you host this in your home?

Rebecca 4:10

No, I hosted this at one of my favorite coworking cafes called wa coms because strangers, you know,

Aimee 4:17

Yeah. Okay. Okay. But what do you mean you provided the coffee, and how is it that you invited them to this coworking place, but they didn't know that they were gonna be coloring?

Rebecca 4:25

no. Here's what happened. So when we went to the Eiffel Tower and made our wishes. And I was speaking to my new friend. I said, the if, if I want this wish to come true, my wish is that I want to gather people who want to do the same activities that I like to do costume parties. But that's a big ask. I don't have a social group for that yet. Dinners, but I don't have a cook right now'cause I'm the, I'm the host and the table setter, not the cook. Um, but Coloring Club, I love. Coloring books and coloring pencils, intricate coloring books, not little kid ones, they're not messy. You can start and stop and pick it up whenever you want. You can be really intricate or you can be just really, you know, just doodly about it. It's a perfect little craft. And because I find, how do I wanna say this? With many people, I find conversation without distraction really exhausting. Having a side quest, especially with new people, takes care of like awkward silences and. It gives you something other than the weather to talk about. You know, you can be like, oh, I love that color you chose. Like, it's innocuous, but it's personal. Like to me it's perfect. So, um, I told the girl at the Eiffel Tower Wish and she said, I will be there. So I knew I had one guest and then this other gal. She visits Paris every single year. She's from a networking group that I'm in, but I'd never met her. She's we're just digitally connected. Last year she was like, I'm here. It didn't work this year. We connected and it worked, and she brought her cousins. So that's how the connections happened.

Aimee 6:15

Okay. Okay.

Rebecca 6:16

And then I, so I chose Viacoms because. I'd done my recon, and everybody who has listened to the podcast knows I'm a nervous Nelly, so I'm only gonna go places that I'm comfortable with. It's a old train station converted into a cafe, so it's filled with light and it's for coworking. So I knew that even if we got a little voy with our American voices, it would be okay. And I did a combination of my favorite coloring books I have. traveling With Your Octopus by Brian Kessinger, which is such a fun one for anybody who loves octopuses. And then another one is called Magical Creatures. Can't remember the, uh, author Kirby something Dragons. And. Princesses and like deer with flowers growing outta their antlers and things like that. And then I played on Midjourney and I created some coloring pages that are more like what I want to find, and I'm having trouble finding. So some unicorn things and some flowers and mushrooms. And my real dream is one day that I actually create my own coloring book with my own drawings, and now I'm blathering on. So you get the idea.

Aimee 7:25

so you had three people attend your very first coloring club,

Rebecca 7:29

Yes.

Aimee 7:30

and how did it go?

Rebecca 7:32

I mean, it was perfect. It was absolutely perfect. We drank our doble espressos and we had croissant and they colored the prettiest pages. Amy one gal, she did a, she chose a, a flower page. And the way she colored it. And this gal's, like in her sixties or seventies, she hadn't, she told me she hadn't colored since she was in fourth grade.

Aimee 7:57

Oh

Rebecca 7:57

So cool. And her color choices were beautiful. They were like jewel tone colors. The way she spread the colors out on the page is how I would do a gallery wall where like I wanna cross pollinate. So if there's yellow up in the top corner, there's a little yellow in the bottom left.

Aimee 8:15

Right.

Rebecca 8:16

Just fabulous with that. And then different from anybody I'd ever seen before. She kind of outlined where the lines were with color and then shaded in the middle, which her cousin referred to as, um, I can't pronounce it. it's like, so it's a kind of, um, jewelry making where they have the little metal rings and then they fill it with the enamel.

Aimee 8:42

Yes, yes, I know exactly what you're talking about. I just saw some of those pieces in Rome last

Rebecca 8:48

So it had that effect and it was gorgeous.

Aimee 8:54

That is so cool. Are you gonna be able to do another one before you leave?

Rebecca 8:59

I doubt I'll be able to do another one in Paris. I will definitely be doing it in Manon, but my friend from Cameroon, um, she and I are gonna do another thing that's been on my wishlist. There is a big. Hot air weather balloon in the 15th that rises up in the air all the time. You can write it. And I'm going to

Aimee 9:23

Nice.

Rebecca 9:24

so that's gonna happen in March right before we move, because it's been on the bucket list for a while and she also wants to do it.

Aimee 9:31

Oh my God, that's so great. Okay, so what else have you done as a single lady?

Rebecca 9:37

All right, so you already know, I did that mapping exercise for mapping my year. So I did that. I went to Cafe de Flore, which is a total tourist trap with a really good friend of mine from Britain. It's worth going to because you know, Hemingway or whomever used to sit there, but you will be paying way too much. You will be surrounded by tourists, and you will not have great food. And accept that, like that's not why you go. Okay. Um, I did a freelancer networking thing through Meetup that was kind of a flop. Oh, and I told you about Entrepreneurs Coworking in a boat, which was also a flop because I couldn't find the group. But I did discover the Annette K, which is, did I tell you about the place that has the gym and the swimming pool? On the Seine River in a barge. I think I did.

Aimee 10:30

Yes. Yes, I believe you did.

Rebecca 10:32

Yeah. Um, tried to go back to English standup comedy, but they sold out. So I'm trying to listen to the universe that I apparently was supposed to wander the streets of Paris that night. I watched the Barbie movie with my British friend. That was a really fascinating cultural exchange.

Aimee 10:51

Oh, I bet.

Rebecca 10:52

Uh oh. And I went to a cocktail party with a designer friend of mine, so I actually went to a really fancy showroom, Pierre Frey, oh my gosh, the most amazing, colorful, whimsical carpet motifs you can even imagine.

Aimee 11:08

Wait, did you post those on Instagram?

Rebecca 11:10

did. And not only, not only did I post that on Instagram, but this is for all the entrepreneurs out there. I posted on LinkedIn as well, which randomly found me a new client for the class that was starting in three days

Aimee 11:27

Shut up.

Rebecca 11:28

in the European market, which is where I really wanna have clients. So, like I said, really trying to follow where the universe sends me because that was not where I was supposed to go. That was not where the cocktail party was. My designer friend called me and she's like, where are you? And I'm like, I'm in the front, near the wallpaper. And she goes, you're not in the right place. There's no wallpaper here. But if I hadn't gone to the wrong place, taken the video, made the re, I would not have gotten that client.

Aimee 12:02

Wow. Wow. Wow.

Rebecca 12:03

Yeah,

Aimee 12:04

That is so awesome,

Rebecca 12:06

and it's not like all of the people that I've met over the last few weeks I just met. A lot of these are seeds that have been planted way, way back. When we first got here, the designer was somebody that, came from when I reached out in a women living in Paris Group saying, Hey, are there any other interior designers in this group? I'd love to meet you.

Aimee 12:27

Nice. Yeah.

Rebecca 12:28

So that's the single life for me. It's proactive socializing that sometimes is a dud and sometimes is absolute magic.

Aimee 12:39

That sounds like life. Sometimes you have days that are total duds and sometimes you have days that are magical. Okay, so that was the first two weeks, and then what happened?

Rebecca 12:51

Okay, so that, that client I got from LinkedIn, well, the class was starting and so I, I have left the apartment in the last two weeks while teaching this class, but

Aimee 13:03

only to get Top Ramen and Snickers

Rebecca 13:07

Okay, so half of that was true. Yeah. No, it's literally just to get food. Like that's the only reason I leave here. no, top Ramen is not in my, not my cycle. Uh, Snickers are,

Aimee 13:18

Oh, okay. All right. I, I overestimated you.

Rebecca 13:23

So most of my food source has come from the Carefor, which is one of the main grocery chains here. And I discovered this section where it's kind of like a deli. There's basically delis in Paris called traiture. And when you look at the word, it looks like traitor. It's really weird. Like you're a traitor to my country. Like that's what the word looks like. but it's a deli. A lot of them are Asian flavored, so like a Chinese deli basically. I've never been brave enough to go into one because it just takes too much energy. And when I'm seeking food, I'm already hungry. But in the grocery store, I discovered a refrigerated section of this kind of food. So it's fairly freshly made, not frozen, but packaged. And so, for example, the other night I made a, like a sweet and sour pork with rice. And then I take a big bag of arugula, which they call rocket here. And then I throw a bowl sized bunch of that in with whatever I'm cooking so that it wilts into it and then I eat it. So most of my fooding has been that, yogurts, puddings, and Snickers.

Aimee 14:36

I'm really happy to hear that you're getting greens in at least most days.

Rebecca 14:43

No, it's pretty bad. And the problem is not only have I not left the apartment in two weeks except for food, I am also working way, way too late and the problem is now I'm so tired that I'm making terrible decisions. And so in the grocery bag today was on top of. I just described also walkers, shortbread cookies, because they remind me of my grandma and um, Oreos because that's how tired I'm

Aimee 15:07

Oh, we're at Oreos.

Rebecca 15:08

we're at Oreos.

Aimee 15:09

Are you committed to staying this tired?

Rebecca 15:15

No, I can't. Oh my God, Amy, I can't because okay, there are 16 days until I see my husband. In that amount of time, I will finish teaching one class. I have to promote and sell another class. Um. I have to go to Portugal for my biometric visit, and then I fly to the United States, give a talk on how to use geography as part of your marketing. Then spend five or six days with my family who I haven't seen in years, and then come back here, get ready to move to Mentone right when I get back, and then come back to Paris to see my mom and my aunt. So I can't afford to stay this tired.

Aimee 15:57

no, so. So what will you do to change the trajectory?

Rebecca 16:02

Yeah, I have no plan for that right now, Amy, and we'll do my therapy offline.

Aimee 16:10

There's a cliche about what happens when you fail to plan. Do you know how that ends?

Rebecca 16:19

I'm pretty sure that you plan to fail.

Aimee 16:22

Correct.

Rebecca 16:23

Yes. Look, I'm not so tired. Am I? I thought of that.

Aimee 16:28

That has nothing to do with your level of fatigue, my dear.

Rebecca 16:31

Oh, man.

Aimee 16:33

All right. Well, I'll just, I'll just, uh, sit over here and watch, watch you figure that out.

Rebecca 16:41

Mm-hmm. It's gonna be great. It's gonna be great. No, but the takeaway listeners is not to work yourself to death, but can I just take an aside for

Aimee 16:49

Do, do, do what Rebecca says, not what Rebecca does. That dear listener, is the takeaway today.

Rebecca 16:57

Well, no. No it's not. No, it's not. You know, I wrote something down about this. I said, yes, this is a reel that I have not posted yet, but someday I'll, it says, it says you are going to overcommit yourself. You are going to over promise yourself, you are going to overstretch yourself. And then it says, it is not because you are dumb or an idiot, which is what sometimes my inner voice tells me. But because we, you and I, whoever's listening to this and totally identifying with me, we are ambitious and we are driven, and we love our work and we're excited about our work, and that is not a bad thing. So I think it's very important that we stop saying I'm such an idiot for overpromising myself again. And then maybe, dear listeners, it's also good advice to listen to Amy and then go, oh, I see that it's happening and maybe we should make a plan for getting out of it again.

Aimee 17:57

As long as it doesn't serve you right, like if chronically overcommitting and overpromising is something that you feel is still a net benefit, then by all means keep doing it. And chances are you're under the age of 30, if that applies to you. If you are at a point where Rebecca is where she is. Judging herself because for whatever reason it's not aligning with something else that she values, then consider changing it or looking at how it could be different, right? Like

Rebecca 18:35

The thing is, here's why it's hard, Amy, since you, since you challenged me on this. Do you know the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?

Aimee 18:43

yeah.

Rebecca 18:44

You know, when he's in his, big garage tinkering to build the car and like his family never sees him and he just comes in to grab a drink or whatever, and it goes on and there's a whole montage, right? And then there's also these stories of like. I don't know, Robert Frost or whomever, and they go off into the woods and they write their book. I have always been jealous of these stories, mostly of men, because women never had this freedom to just consume themselves in their work. And I love it and I don't, I'm not saying it's healthy, but I don't wanna give it away.

Aimee 19:27

well, let's not, let's not put that, let's not put that judgment healthy on it. There are consequences, right?

Rebecca 19:34

Yes.

Aimee 19:35

In this day and age, the consequence of fully immersing yourself in your work at the expense of everything else is poor health, shorter lifespan, likely living alone and losing family, right? Like these men who committed themselves to work lost marriages. Their children never speak to them because they were never there, right? So yes, they also achieved fame. We're still talking about them even though they've been dead for generations, but. There was likely a great personal cost that was lost in the history of those folks, right? But we see, at least I see around me, I have known in my lifetime, because I come from multi-generation workaholics, that there are consequences that. Are often not considered until they are lost. And if you wait too long to take care of your health, there's some of it you can't regain. If you wait too long to save your marriage, sometimes it cannot be saved. If you wait too long to have a relationship with your children, sometimes they're gonna tell you to F off, right? And then, you know, you get your, your castle and your success and your notoriety and your fame,

Rebecca 20:54

but you die alone.

Aimee 20:55

but you die

Rebecca 20:56

Yeah, and, and you know, going back to the start of today's episode. The reason I'm getting this gift of time is because the man that I would, in fact, prefer to spend my time with is missing. And so I, I think it's nice that when he's gone, I miss him, but I don't pine for him. I, I think, I think what I've discovered is that I enjoy my own company. That is a really nice thing to discover because especially as women, we won't always get the gift of having our partner for our whole lives, men and women. But you know, we out outlive our partners and that's very thrilling to me. Um, I can only tax myself at this level because there is an end date.

Aimee 21:48

Ah, good. This is good. This is good to find out. I'm really glad to hear that.

Rebecca 21:55

Yeah, if this, if I was truly single, you know, between marriages I went nuts. I performed burlesque and I did whatever the heck I wanted. There are, there are things you get to do for yourself in transition that are healthy in a different way. You just have to make sure that. You do come back out it, because it isn't a good long term plan for all the reasons you just said, because they're completely in 100% um, true valid. Thank you, but. I have discovered that this is a gift when I can give myself this kind of concentrated time, I like it. I guess what I'm saying is to me, for in my life balance has never been. A week. One week is gonna be way outta whack one, one direction, and another week is gonna be way outta whack, another direction. But the sum total of my life does feel like I'm getting fed in all the places.

Aimee 22:55

Ah, okay. Yeah, yeah. This, so this, this detail was like lost in the initial. Telling perhaps because you're so ti tired,

Rebecca 23:04

my husband hasn't left me permanently. Like that's the key detail

Aimee 23:08

right,

Rebecca 23:09

here. That would be a different conversation.

Aimee 23:11

a hundred percent. You would be in a different mood.

Rebecca 23:14

Yes, I would. Yes, I would. I, yeah. Let's not ever find out what that mood is, hopefully. Alright. yeah, I've wandered on, is there anything we need to do to put a bow on this for our listeners?

Aimee 23:26

Let's put a bow on it. What Rebecca means is seize the day

Rebecca 23:30

Gotta pay DM. And with that, dear listeners, you're gonna get to hear about Rome again in our next episode. Stay tuned.

Speaker 2 23:40

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Banla. If you did, the best thing you can do is share it with another person, brave enough to move abroad. See you next time.