The change conundrum

I sat in front of my computer screen, starring at the blank blogspot page, all day yesterday.  I would write once sentence and then think 'I haven't written in months, this can't be my opening sentence, I have to find something better'.

This went on for a good 3 hours (and an alarming amount of coffee).  This is something I do all the time, I wait for something grand or 'perfect' to happen before starting something, like writing again.  I moved to Paris over two years ago, and have wanted to put a 'Andreea in Paris' spin on my blog since then (even before Emily did the same!) I've gone out armed with my phone on camera mode and a note pad, did historical ‘research’, met a few very blog-worthy online prospects; I was constantly planning out my first 'perfect' post about this deliciously wonderful city that I can now call home. However, ‘surprisingly’, that perfect day never came, and of course I never had enough time to write... or at least it's the excuse I gave myself before binging on Netflix for hours, often on things I had already seen, maybe even knew by heart. 

Something similar happens to me and money, I always wonder where it goes or why I can’t save more? As I come home from the pharmacy, having gone for floss, and coming home with a array of new skin-care products, (because I'm bored with my current beauty routine), new shoes (because the shoe store is next to the pharmacy, and there was sale), and even new jacket (not next to the pharmacy, and not on sale…but it matches the new shoes)…

I've been thinking a lot about how I consume things lately, one the major ones is time; about what to do with it to make it count, about why no matter what I do, I never seem ‘to have enough of it to get everything done’; I’ve been thinking about this blog, about writing, about tango...about the new year, and all the silly resolutions that go with it, and trying to figure how to go about the next year to change a few things. 

Like most people, or some people, or at least some of the people I hang out with, I've jumped on the 'forming new habits' bandwagon; you know the ‘it takes 21 days, no 30 no 40 days to create new habits, to change this or that in your life, to free your mind, to lose weight, to get over a break-up.” And despite some initial skepticism on the matter, I am more and more convinced that it is the only real way to make life changes,  you know, the ones that matter.  

I recently read a book called “The year of less” about a girl in her mid-twenties who decided to give up shopping for a year in order to take control of her finances and reimburse a scary amount of debt she had accumulated.   The interesting thing is that through restricting shopping, she didn't just stop buying things senselessly, but she started analyzing why she felt the need to do so, spending hours on amazon for something she didn't even know she wanted before she knew she couldn't live without it, buying something simply because it was on sale, buying something she didn’t need or even want but felt that she should want. 

During this same time, Cait, the author, also stopped drinking, she had what can be considered a severe drinking problem regularly drinking to a point of blacking out, she lost weight, reduced the amount of TV she ‘consumed’, and overall, just changed how she lived and consumed her life.  Everything, from her bank account, to her physical and mental heath, to her professional development, benefitted from the shopping experiment.

The idea being, that it's not JUST the shopping but the behaviour and reasons behind it, and how you can change a habit in one aspect of your life and it affecting various others. Coincidently, Cait also blogged about her shopping-free journey before turning it into a book…

I have no pretention of comparing myself to a successful published author, obviously, but I found the idea inspiring, and seemed like the perfect occasion to start writing again.

So therefore, I decided to make 2022 the year of change.  The year I eliminate certain bad habits, (some I will keep since they’re an integral part of my neurotic charm), create new, and better habits, live in Paris, and tell you about it. 

I’m not 100% sure on the how and what, I have an idea of course but not an actual plan, or at least not yet, but I will very soon.

Stay tuned.