Sun and happy

The sun is out.  I don't believe that I could feel more content.  The sun is hitting my back, warming it to that place where I wonder if I might get a sunburn.  But I don't care.  Let it sink into me, warm me from one side to the next, so I can feel my intestines warm and red-hued see-through.  Today was a day of nothing and everything all at once.  Why is it, that if we don't do something we've never done before, or something that "needed" to be done, we think we haven't accomplished anything for the day?  For example, if I was to tell my family what I did today, I would feel a bit foolish.  All this day has consisted of is a) soaking in the sun, b) painting and drawing, and c) listening to music, very loudly and very satiating (aka Imogen Heap radio and epic female artists).

Oh how I love that over a year ago I left everything I knew and moved to France.  The act of purposefully deciding to not have a plan, and to be okay with it, has been the best decision of my life.  Our push and pull world of more and more and more, our climb and flatten world of success, success, success--it exhausts/ed me.  And had me completely in it's hold, until I started living as a stay-at home mom.  Talk about a change in perspective.  The little things matter now.  The act of success and running the rat-race seems so ridiculous now.  And I still get caught on it.  Like, today, and feeling foolish for not necessarily "accomplishing" anything.  Isn't it just as important to fill our hearts and expand the right-side of our brain?  Why do we simply assume that those who work 40+ hours a week and have a long list of recognizable achievements as "better"? 

I never want to forget this lesson.  The lesson that taking a day to connect with myself, with others, with nature, with God, with music, with art, with animals, is never less important, and perhaps even more important, than filling my days with the acts of more, more, more, and success, success, success.  Let me be filled instead with sun and light,  music and wind, art and colors, and people.  Because really, people just make everything better.

Happy February!

Alright, alright, so I am a bit late.  January seemed to have taken its sweet time in passing us by.  It's finally two days into February, and I can already feel that February wants to do the same.  Perhaps this slowing of time is due to the fact that every time I see an airplane, I imagine myself inside of it, flying over the ocean, across the United States, and landing in the West.  The fact that the sun decides to only show himself once or twice a week could also be effecting my perception of time.

I dreamed last night that I was home.  Both my parents were there with me, in our old living room.  I started crying and explained to them that I wanted to stay there in Idaho and I also wanted to return to France.  And then I was hanging out with some friends, speaking in German and in French and in English, and realizing that I was mixing them all up but not minding because we all understood.  Crazy what living abroad does to you.

Missing home and loving where I am living is an exciting and somewhat bipolar ride.  I feel like a lot of expats understand this feeling.  Where you wake up and are so ecstatic to be where you are one day and then could literally spend all your savings on a last-minute ticket home the next day.  And then that crazy switch that happens where you want to write something, or say something, and you find that the way you want too involves two or three languages, instead of the regular just one. 

I am happy to say that I have another activity on my plate besides working and learning French: rock climbing!  Admittedly, it is also a lot of French learning since the class is in French, but I don't mind.  I've already had nearly 3 weeks of classes and I'm absolutely loving it.  It's fun being a part of a group, even if I don't always understand what is being said.  Plus, my body is digging the exercise.

On top of all this excitement, I have been busy planning for what I will be doing upon arriving back in the USA.  Mainly, reading and reading and reading about PERMACULTURE.  Look it up.  Wikipedia has a little something-something about it.  It's legit.  I love it.  And this is what I am planning to do with my life when I get back to Idaho.  Become a farmer.  And a florist.  For kicks and giggles, and not so much kicks and giggles.  We all know I've always been a hippie at heart, just traveling back to my roots, and my dreams.

I hope ya'll will do the same.  Become hippies that is.  The longer I live in Paris, the more I realize how much we need hippies, revolutionaries, people willing to step down, closer to nature, not farther from it.  Dreamers, too.  We need lots more dreamers, people who aren't afraid of imagining and then reaching for the impossible. 

Just wanted to write a quick update.  Happy February, everybody!