Everything I learned from six months of living delusionally

Six months ago I quit my job and moved to Paris

Une Femme Est Une Femme (1961)

It was a cold, sunny afternoon and the whole city looked yellow as though someone had spread butter over it. Sitting on a terrace in Montmartre, I wondered what the hell I was doing with my life. (A likely thing for your under-employed friend to do on a random Thursday at 3pm.)

I thought of my friends back in the UK. Some of them have jobs in law and finance. Some of them have mortgages, investments, pensions. And what was I doing? I’d flung myself across the Channel for some vague notion of a dream. Quit my full-time job at a magazine to flail in French and work part-time as a teacher. Was it time to call it quits on my year of delusion?

Six months ago, I quit my job and moved to Paris.

There was no particular reason behind the move. No job or partner already waiting on the other side. Just a head full of delusion and a quiet wish to change everything in my life. The desire to move was like an itch I couldn’t ignore. After years spent dreaming, it was time to take action.

That action looked like arriving in Paris beneath a surreal flurry of snow that covered the dome of the Sacré-Cœur like icing sugar. I watched lovers etch hearts and initials in the snow that would melt away two days later. Nothing is forever, but I still felt sorry and so guilty for letting all this beauty slip through my frozen fingers. It’s hard to imagine that kind of cold now. Lately, there’s been no ice, only fires. My life here is unfurling at similar extremes.

Kill your scarcity mindset! Be delusional!

An essay I wrote in those first snow-spattered days would become my first viral Substack post, laying out my delusional goals for thousands to see. That bloody, vulnerable knot of want laid bare to so many strangers. By March, I felt like a fraud. Every time someone commented saying they felt inspired to be delusional — or worse, quit their job — I wanted to reach out and say, “No, no, no, please don’t follow my example, I’m literally just a random girl on the internet! I’m as lost and confused as you are!”

I’ve weathered more periods of self-doubt since, but I never once regretted moving to Paris. Even when I’m burnt out or sick or roasting alive in my apartment, I still can’t ignore how happy I feel. An American girl in a bar tells me how the magic never wears off. After eight years in the city, it still takes her breath away. We’re all looking for a love like that and I think I’ve found it here.

Now it’s July and clarity is finally emerging from behind the thick clouds of uncertainty. So, here are three things I’ve learnt from six months of living delusionally.

i. the secret to delusion is patience

Building a life you truly love takes time, but patience is a virtue we’re rarely taught to embrace. Capitalism promotes the mindset of everything now and more. We want it to be fast, frictionless, convenient, immediate. This desire for short cuts is manifesting in the rise of AI, but cultivating it in your own worldview can make you sick. Your dreams are not fast food to wolf down in one guilty gulp. They’re a long meal at a restaurant where the service might be slow and the seats might be uncomfortable but, when the food finally arrives, it tastes so exquisite that you forget how impatient you felt half an hour ago.

Social media always shows us the end result, broadcasting clickbaity headlines of 30 under 30 and motivational influencers competing to say how quickly they took their creative practice full-time. But I have always liked taking the long way home, stopping to photograph the sky on the way.

Yet, patience does not come naturally to me. When I moved, I wanted the French fluency, the dream commission and the financial security all at once. When I rang my long suffering mother to express this, she laughed in response and said, “What are you like? You’ve only been there a few weeks. Stop putting so much pressure on yourself.” Fair enough. Sometimes you have to admit when your parents are right.

Six months in, I’ve started making a bit more money, I’ve landed some of those dream commissions and I’m ready to start a C1 French course in autumn. If I’d given up four months ago out of frustration or impatience then none of this would have happened.

“I’m taking it for granted that this – right now, writing outside a cafe in Montmartre, the late March sun on my face – is the dream,” I wrote in my journal on the butter yellow terrace in March. “Sometimes I feel stupid for coming here and thinking it would work. Others, I know I just have to be patient.”

ii. you have taken a risk so don’t be surprised when it feels that way

Taking a risk is a lesson in self-trust. You have to trust that it will work out. You have to trust that if it doesn’t then you will be ok anyway. You have to catch yourself when you fall. Lately, I haven’t been falling as much as hurtling forwards at an unforgiving speed. Spring bled into summer and I worked and wrote and burnt beneath the sun. Now, it’s July and I have whiplash from everything that has happened.

Moving abroad really hammers home the realisation that no one is coming to save you. Changing my life so drastically at 28 made me realise that, really, I could do anything I wanted to do, but I would also have to live with the consequences. The day before I moved, my dad told me I was taking a risk. I shrugged off the comment, only realising later — as I scrambled for money and muddled through French paperwork — the weight of the risk I had taken.

My plan was to spend one year being delusional then the next two years being realistic, but I’ve realised there is no realistic life waiting for me at the end. There’s no boring, well paid job just waiting to hire me. Despite promising myself I’d try freelancing for a year, I’ve applied for many full-time jobs in Paris and had a few interviews. The realisation that the backup option might not exist was terrifying at first, but sometimes it feels liberating. If I’d got the first job I applied for then I wouldn’t have got the opportunities that I’ve had since.

I believe it’s our right to take all the risks we want. I hope I never stop taking risks. I hope the thrill of the fear never goes away. I want to keep on feeling its frisson forever. It makes me feel daringly alive.

iii. moving cities will not make you less busy or more prolific

Like many other hapless dreamers, I hauled my body to Paris to write, naively thinking that the city would reward me with time, space and inspiration. I imagined long afternoons writing in cafes, early mornings scribbling in my journals, slow weekends where words would flow like water. Surely leaving the chaos of London would reset my calendar. But I only ended up recreating the same breathless, frantic pace on the continent.

Obviously, moving countries is time-consuming. It presents you with mountains of the kind of dull paperwork that is antithethical to carving out time for creating. Then there are the financial implications of starting all over again. I’ve been working two jobs which sometimes means working every hour I’m awake on weekdays. I’ve been battling my chronic illness and navigating endless appointments in French. I’m in a new relationship and I have new friends. None of this is particular conducive to free time for personal projects.

Lots of people move to Paris to write and realise that the city is not set up for that anymore. When writers moved here in the early 20th century, it was cheap. You could live off writing and maybe the odd side job. It’s much harder to do that now unless you have additional financial support from family.

Facing the glittering turquoise sea in Brittany, my boyfriend recently asked if I’d been feeling inspired lately. Truthfully, I hadn’t. I hadn’t had time for inspiration. The guilt of not making the most of this beauty reared its head again.

So, is a year of living delusionally worth it? I think so, but I’d only advise it if you’re pursuing something you think about every single day. You have to want it to badly you can’t imagine living without it, otherwise the patience, the risk and the burnout isn’t worth it.

Still, in Paris, the magic never goes away. I still rest my arms against the cold stone balustrade of the Sacré-Cœur and feel the weight of all the hopeful dreamers bartering their delusions on the sweltering streets below. I hope I’ll have time to write about it all in more detail one day. The delusional part of me still thinks I will.

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