The Big Reset. Part I
“An artist must have downtime, time to do nothing. Defending our right to such time takes courage, conviction, and resiliency. Such time, space, and quiet will strike our family and friends as a withdrawal from them. It is.
For an artist, withdrawal is necessary. Without it, the artist in us feels vexed, angry, out of sorts. If such deprivation continues, our artist becomes sullen, depressed and hostile. We eventually become like cornered animals, snarling at our family and friends to leave us alone and stop making unreasonable demands.”
-The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
Have you ever dreamed about leaving your job, selling up and buying a cheap old property somewhere else in the world, following your creative dreams and bowing out of the rat race? Being mortgage free, and living simply and honestly. Maybe growing your own fruit and veg, having chickens and being closer to nature? We did, we took the plunge and packed up our life and moved to rural France about 20 months ago. We are living the dream! But, all of that is the edited version! It does not include the trials, the challenges, the emotional and mental struggles that are involved in a major reset. I am going to share the unedited version with you. I have been promising a blog post on it for over a year but I think it is better that I didn’t do it straight away. I have had time to settle, reflect, have struggles, overcome them etc. I will be honest and open about our experience.
Our life before the big move…
We lived in the lovely seaside town of Hastings, East Sussex, in a very nice but somewhat small flat. My partner, Michael, was an electrical engineer in the UK and had been so for nearly twenty years. We have been together for nine years and he has always worked so hard, long days, lots of travelling, sometimes four hours or more of driving in a day, six days a week, sometimes seven. He was at burnout point.
Our second floor flat in Hastings:
The light was lovely, as were the views to the sea but the access was pretty awful and as it was an end of terrace building, it overlooked a busy road at the side. The constant traffic noise and having noisy neighbours below were a constant annoyance.
I have been an artist for over twenty years, I have always lived pretty simply. When we had our daughter six years ago Michael continued to work full-time and I looked after her, fitting in my artwork when I could. I got frustrated pretty quickly trying to work from home and looked for a studio, I couldn’t find one but did find a shop. I took it on and we managed to get our daughter into nursery. It was a great space, but if any of you have kids, you will know that nurseries are germ factories and our daughter was probably ill with colds and bugs 50% of the time and I couldn’t maintain regular hours at the shop. The cost became prohibitive, so it was back to working at the dining room table.
The short lived shop space:
Around this time I started moving my art practice over to wallpaper design, in fact ‘Mirage’ which I painted with Diane Hill for Osborne & Little was painted in my lounge/dining room in our small flat in Hastings. It was a tricky balance of home and work life but we managed, albeit with frustration.
The flat was lovely when tidy but the reality of working from home with little to no storage was a little chaotic. The views across Hastings and down to the sea were awesome though.
Trump was in power, the climate crisis and Xtinction Rebellion were making an impact in the news and in my thoughts daily. The UK elections were upcoming and I really, really did not want Boris Johnson to get into power. I kept feeling an overwhelming sense of foreboding, that something bad was coming. One of my favourite ‘escape from reality’ past times was looking at properties on Rightmove for alternative ways of life. We had been toying with the idea of moving to Scotland for sometime. We had already taken a trip up to the Isle of Skye in November 2016 to see if we thought we could cope with the Scottish weather in winter. It happened to be quite a mild November and we had a magical time but the dots never connected enough for us to make the move there.
Scotland will forever have a piece of my heart:
Looking further afield…
My sister had been obsessed with the idea of moving to France for years and so naturally I started looking at what properties were available there. When you see just how much property you get for your money in parts of France the temptation is STRONG! I have to admit I have never been a huge Francophile, I don’t drink wine, I am dairy and gluten intolerant so nearly all French cuisine is off the menu for me, I don’t even speak French (beyond the most basic of exchanges anyway).
So why France?
You’ll have to read Part II to find out what pushed us to take the leap, how we negotiated an international move during the pandemic and why we picked the house we did! And lots of photos of the french property.
Part II coming 23rd May 2022.
