Succès

Success (Eng.)/Succès (Fr.) noun: The favorable or prosperous termination or attempts of endeavors.

I have been absent from the blog for a variety of reasons:

1. I have been trying to rent my house back in the states, and fielding inquiries keeps me plenty busy.

2. I am about to launch a large project for my client that I have been working on since May 2011.

3. I have been in house buying negotiations for an adorable (dare I say it, my "dream house") in Bourgogne.

4. I have been dealing with the French banks to open a mortgage in France. (The answer is "Yes", I may be completely insane).

5. I have been trying to find out where in the world my France Residency Permit renewal is within a governmental system that makes no sense.

And while all of these items in and of themselves had been riddled with road blocks, challenges, fearfulness, self doubts and second thoughts, I know that they really just represent a whole lot of messy squiggles on the road to success.

Thank God for a diagram that shows how this process actually works.

Je t'aime

I am all for a good ole self affirmation, especially when it comes to self love.

Yet, there is something quite magical to hearing these three precious words uttered from the mouth of babes.

Voyages

Voyages (Fr.)/ Traveling (Eng.): to go, move or journey from one place to another; as if on a trip.

I have been conspicuously absent from my blog for the past couple of months. So allow me to explain where I been...

Oh, pilot of the storm who leaves no trace, like thoughts inside a dream...

"It was an amazing piece of music to write to, and an incredible challenge for me ... Because of the time signature, the whole deal of the song is… not grandiose, but powerful: it required some kind of epithet, or abstract lyrical setting about the whole idea of life being an adventure and being a series of illuminated moments. But everything is not what you see. It was quite a task, ’cause I couldn’t sing it. It was like the song was bigger than me. It’s true: I was petrified, it’s true. It was painful; I was virtually in tears."
-Robert Plant, interviewed by Cameron Crowe in Rolling Stone, March 13, 1975, when describing the process of writing the music/ lyrics to Kashmir

That quote seems to be the only way to sum up the past two months for me. It was spent traveling, taking care of personal business, working, spending time with people that I adore, visiting new faraway lands, staying on task, yet letting things unfold in the direction of my dreams.

It was equal parts terrifying and joyful; attaching and detaching; painstakingly hard work, yet effortlessly fabulous all at the same time.

As if that is even possible.

Portland

(note: this post was never published due to my unpredictable wifi connections over the past month. But now that I am in Paris and gearing up to fill you in on what is up with my current journey, I felt it fitting to begin the catch up with this post)

Yesterday, in Portland Oregon I experienced Reiki for the first time.

I have been dealing with a lot of uncertainty due to my transition between Portland and Paris. When I moved to Paris last year, I had renters lined up for my house. This time, after tending to my stateside business, I am returning to Paris without having new renters in place.  My property manager says it is a difficult time of the year to rent, but he assures me that it will eventually work out. I am continuing with my plan to go back to Paris in spite of this missing piece of the puzzle. I am holding onto faith that it will all work out for my highest good and the highest good of others.

I can't help but contemplate if I am being foolish or if this is an example of taking a leap of faith and trusting that the universe is going to work it all out. At what point to we accept our challenges as signs from the universe that we should or should not so something? Is the lack of renters a sign that I should not return to Paris, but rather stay put and play it safe?

I am not sure what I should be doing in order to properly address my uncertainty and bizarre space that I am in. But since a dear friend of mine has expanded her massage practice to include Reiki, I made sure to have an appointment on the books.

The word Reiki is made of two Japanese words - Rei which means "God's Wisdom or the Higher Power" and Ki which is "life force energy". So Reiki is actually "spiritually guided life force energy."


After a very deep relaxing treatment I have affirmed by decision to continue onward on the path of faith.

Grande

Grande (Fr.)/ Big (Eng.) noun:  Outstanding for a specified quality, important, or major concern, large as in size, height, width or amount.

"You have to dream big in order to get big."
- Dee Vo

Here's to a big 2012!

Cheers!

Inconnu

Inconnu (Fr.)/ Unknown (Eng.) noun: not known, understood or recognized; strange, new, undiscovered, untravelled, unmapped, undetermined, undisclosed, unspecified, unfamiliar; secret, not revealed;  not established or verified.

"Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little."
- Agnes de Mille, American dancer, choreographer, publisher

Perfectionnisme

Perfectionnisme (Fr.)/Perfectionism (Eng): a propensity for being displeased with anything that is not perfect or does not meet extremely high standards.

And as far as my creative endeavors are concerned, I suffer from this.

I don't feel finished with my NaNoWriMo piece although the deadline was four days ago and I hit submit. I feel that it really needs a final chapter, a conclusion. What happened to the woman who found love in Paris? Where is she now? What did it all represent in the grand scheme of things? The ending could be 1-2 pages as far as I am concerned, so the length is not what has been keeping me from the sensation of having crossed the finish line-- perfectionism is.

I have simultaneously been participating in the 12-week Artists' Way program and find it auspicious timing that this week's chapter is all about Perfectionism.

Here is an except from the Artist's Way chapter on Perfectionism, by Julia Cameron:

"Tillie Olsen correctly calls it the knife of the perfectionist attitude in art. You may call it something else. Getting it right, you may call it, or fixing it before I go any further. You may call it having standards. What you should be calling it is perfectionism."

"Perfectionism has nothing to do with getting it right. It has nothing to do with fixing things. It has nothing to do with standards. Perfectionism is a refusal to let yourself move ahead. It is a loop-- an obsessive, debilitating closed system that causes you to get stuck in the details of what you are writing or painting or making and to lose sight of the whole."

"Perfectionism is not a quest for the best. It is a pursuit of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will ever be good enough-- that we should try again."

"No we should not."

"A book is never finished. But at a certain point you stop writing and go on to the next thing. That is the normal part of creativity-- letting go. We do the best we can by the light we have to see by."



With that said, I will let the ending be exactly where it is was of the official NaNoWriMo deadline, let go, and find comfort that its unfinished-ness could be the beginning in disguise-- perhaps for a sequel.