Change is a matter of feeling safe enough to let go of who you are to become someone new

Also, I’m going to Paris.

Paris vision board I made some time during the fantasizing process

So, I’m going to Paris in 2 days. Why? Well, I will only know for sure once the trip is complete. I have become so practiced now, at simply listening to the call of my intuition. Of going where I am called, when I am called. Each time, though, I am confronted with all the thoughts that want to keep me where I am, keep me safe, keep me in the known, in the certainty, in the space of comfort. Even something as ultimately safe and benign as travelling alone for a couple of weeks in Paris can feel like a threat to who you are, when you have become routine and rooted in your “home” for long enough. This is, I imagine, why my intuition is taking me there. I need spontaneity and change as much as I need structure and routine. And if there is anything that I have learned over the years, it is that I do, in fact, need both. I’ve learned to honour these desires. To actually allow myself to have both, instead of imposing rigidity and structure on myself that I CANNOT BREAK OR ELSE, as well as refraining from allowing myself to get too flowy, expecting my present self to always pick the wise option needed to have a balanced, thoughtful, and intentional life. I am learning to find the balance. And after a few months in as loyal and consistent a routine flow as I can remember, I decided last week that I simply must—must!—go to Paris for two weeks because, well, because I want to.

The decision and ensuing days of telling those closest to me and feeling into what I want the trip to be has been such a fascinating investigation into transformation, safety, intuition, letting go, beholding something new, and exploring a new threshold I can feel myself on the cusp of.

I caught myself fantasizing two weeks ago about what it would be like to go to pastry school in Paris. I imagined feeling exhausted and confused at the end of the day, fumbling through my limited French vocabulary to try and piece together the technical language I’d be asked to translate into perfected desserts made to please the eye and tongue. I imagined the long days on my feet and the pain in my back from lifting heavy bags of flour and sugar. I imagined the satisfaction of making jokes in French that finally landed with my classmates. I imagined the early mornings and late nights and the whispering to chatGPT in the bathroom about how to ask my question with proper grammar in a language I have been desperately trying to sound natural speaking. I imagined how satisfied I would feel after making my first perfectly flaky croissant and getting the subtle but approving nod of my teacher. I imagined imagined imagined. I let myself get lost in the fantasy. I dreamt about it at night and during the day. I created vision boards and wrote fantastical tales in my head of what it would be like. And I imagined how it would feel, as well, to experience the death and rebirth of moving through a new identity threshold, again.