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Because I usually am in Vino ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** In 2009, I gave up my studies as a medievalist and musician, left my home, my family, my life and moved to Provence in southern France for a guy. In 2012, I moved away from him to study wine. Today, I'm a vagabond sommelier working in Paris at one of the oldest and most famous restaurants in the world, struggling to find some purpose to what I deem the rest of my life. I'm still married and after 8 10 years, I'm still trying to fit-in with French life and culture and to understand why the French are the way they are. Because they're weird in a different way that I think Americans are weird. Perhaps it's me who's weird. |
| It's clear I've failed as an adult. All of my US student loan emails go through an old account that I hadn't looked at in months. I happened to look at it today and discover that my student loans which I had put on deferment sometime in the past are many days overdue. Forbearance is gone. I forgot to renew the deferment and with everything closed, I can't do it now. I can't find masks in the stores here. I don't know if I'll be able to get up to Paris anytime soon to check on my apartment. I haven't filed taxes in the US since moving to France. People tell me this was the wrong thing to do. Despite having no taxable income or any assets or really connection to the US at all. I don't live there anymore. I have a passport with an American stamp but that's all. And quite frankly, I don't care about any of it. I look at this financial wreck of my life and wonder why it all can't just go away. I can't deal with it. It makes me panicky and angry and feel like a total failure so I just don't deal with it. One day it will probably come back to bite me in the ass. I'll get arrested coming into the States to visit my family or something. They'll confiscate my passport and what? I have no assets in France. I don't own anything. I know I should deal with this stuff, but I can't. I don't want to. I hate all of it. Just thinking about all the bureaucratic and financial crap I've avoided all my life is enough to make my anxiety go right through the roof and cause me to break down. Why can't I adult? I can't keep on top of this. I don't know what to do or where to start. So I'm going to take a shower and then bake bread I have rising on the kitchen counter. The day started out so well. I got up early. Started the bread, did some yoga, was feeling pretty good about ... things... and by 11:30am it's all fallen apart. I just want someone to take it off my hands, to take all of this off my hands. I don't want to be responsible for student loans, taxes, papers, documents, passports, and all the rest of that crap. I just want to live my life. I pay taxes in France. I'm a law abiding citizen. I do the best I can. All the rest of that stuff is so unappealing to me and feels so unnecessary. And now I'm drowning in it. Or if I'm not yet, I will be one day. At least I don't have children who will inherit my mess when I'm gone. |
| Tomorrow, wine should be arriving. I ordered six bottles from a sommelier website that has an agreement with various producers mostly in France and highlights different cuvées each month. I also bought another four bottles from my local caviste this morning. So I'm less stressed about the lack of wine in our house. It's kind of ironic if you think about. I'm responsible for one of the biggest wine cellars in the world but my home has a serious lack of wine. There was no wine today, however. Most of today was spent sleeping because my allergies flared up something awful last night. My eyes started to itch, my skin started to itch, and I was sneezing every 15 seconds. Oddly enough, I can breathe fine. I woke up this morning with my eyes swollen and irritated and feeling horrible. I must have been scratching them in my sleep. I managed to buy my wine and make a trip to the pharmacy for medicine. I can't remember the last time I had to take allergy medicine. It was definitely when I was in the States so it was over 10 years ago at least. I don't know what brought on this insanity. My husband thinks it's because I'm not smoking and all the toxins that normally cover my skin - both inside and outside - are gone. I guess that could be it. I just want it to stop. I hope that tomorrow I will feel better. Yesterday was not exactly productive but I had a clearer head, I was thinking about some things, actions I've taken over the years, reactions I've had to other things. Starting to do some home therapy in a way. Today, I just woke up angry. I was angry at everyone. I guess it's alright. Anger is allowed on occasion, even if there is no outward reason for it. At least I'm aware of it... ? It's 22H30 right now. I'll probably go back to sleep soon. I was trying to find a true crime documentary to watch but none of them appealed to me. My eyes hurt anyway. I'll listen to an audiobook instead. Since reading is out. |
| According to the French government, confinement is ending next Monday. Though it's still a subject of debate on how much movement we'll be allowed. We might not get out at all. I don't really care. Monday, deconfinement or not, I'm going running. Because that's what I miss the most. I just want to run. Fuck the elliptical. I could take my chances and go today. There are two old biddies right underneath my window right now, chatting like nothing is wrong. No masks, no personal space, no worries. But I'm not allowed to go running even though I won't be near, or probably even see anyone. I try to stay out of people's business. Especially the French, who never cease to baffle me, and even more especially the Provençale who baffle me even more than a typical Frenchmen. And quite frankly if people want to take their chances getting sick and spreading the virus around, that's their problem. I can't control other people's lives and how they live them. At the same time, it enrages me. I'm doing my part to be a good girl and help others by staying in so that we can all eventually go back to work and restart the economy and save "life as we know it." When honestly, I think we all deserve to go through another massive economic depression that would result in the deaths and starvation of millions. I believe we deserve the breakdown of society and the economy, even if it would probably mean my own death to achieve it. But I'm doing my part for others anyway. Because I know most of society isn't ready for that and won't accept it with any sort of grace or ability to rebuild and make the world a better place afterwards. And for the past 20 minutes I've watched people walk underneath my window and chat with their friends like it's just another day. I want shout at them. I could call the cops but as I've said a thousand times, I know the cops here in Arles would do nothing. Absolutely nothing. In other news, I haven't been writing or doing much of anything since NaNo ended. I wasn't doing much during the last week of NaNo besides putting myself on autopilot to bang out 1500 words a day. Yesterday I did try to study and actually sit in front of my computer thinking about writing. I guess that is better than nothing. The first step is always having the intention and opening the book or the blank page. I don't have much to do, so I will try again today. I don't expect to find my groove - as I mentioned in my last entry. At least not for a while. My only goal is to understand myself; understand why, when I have the desire, I cannot find the will. I refuse to accept that this is just the way it is. I no longer allow computer games after 5pm. It was one of the causes of my being unable to sleep even if I was going to bed at a fairly reasonable hour. Around midnight is actually early for me, given that when I'm working my typical bedtime is between 2am-3am. After sleeping badly, nay I say, horribly, for three or four nights in a row I had to change something. It seems to be helping somewhat, though tonight will only be day three. The biddies finally went their separate ways. As I'm almost 40 I often think about at what age someone becomes a biddy. Is it 65? The age of retirement? 70? 80? Is it a state of mind? Because if it is, I'm probably already a biddy even though I look 30. When will some middle-aged women who acts like a 20-something stare out her window at me with disgust and think "ugh, that old biddy is at it again." |
| What's been the most upsetting about the past week is how little I want to write. I'm still doing my 1500 words a day. I'm still pushing through and as long as I continue through the next 3 days I'll have reached my NaNo goal of 45,000 words. I've even done some work on my new project here and there. But it's a struggle. I don't want to work. I don't want to write. I push the 1500 words out of me then immediately close my file and never think about it until the next afternoon when I force myself to go through it again. What's more upsetting is that the 1500 words is not all that hard for me. If I really push and don't worry too much about what I'm writing (which I haven't been lately), I can get it done in less than 45 minutes. I do realize that writing is not a pleasure all the time. It's like any art form or any job - however you want to look at writing - there are always moments when it's not pleasurable and more of a chore than anything else. But ... I expected it to be less of a chore. I expected my motivation to come back the more I forced myself to do it. It worries me. Maybe I don't want to be a writer anymore. Maybe I don't want to look for a new career (I have an idea on that score but I haven't pursued it beyond thinking about the idea). Maybe I just want to do the job I have now and then zone out and retreat into my head the rest of the time. Continue to go home and sleep on my breaks. Run because I run. Shop. Play computer games. And watch my life just roll on by. All the things I wanted can slip through my fingers so quickly. And I seem to be at war with myself; a large part of me seems to want to let them go. The years could pass by without another thought. It's hard to believe I'll be 39 in a couple of months. I don't have a grey hair on my head. This is not the battle I wanted to fight. I wanted to find motivation and inspiration with this time off, this time of confinement and isolation and opportunity. I wanted to find these things in the hope that I would also find myself again. I know that I can't be the person I used to be, but I'd at least like to get some of my groove back. I might be less naive, more realistic and yes, more pessimistic than I was before, but I also can't believe that I'm really ready to give up yet. I just want to find my groove. I wanted to find some pleasure in life again. Maybe that is why I'm always so tired. Why I have a hard time sleeping at night and getting up in the morning. I feel like I have nothing to live for. |
| When watching the news yesterday they happened to mention this was our 40th day of confinement. So today is day 41 I guess. 41 days. I'm getting a little sick of it to be honest. I am pretty much a homebody. Being an expat with a bad attitude and a hatred of speaking French (not because I can't but because I think the language is ugly) I don't have many friends so I never really go out all that often anyway. But all the same, it's starting to get on my nerves that I can't go out when I want, even if it's just to walk to the store or - if I was in Paris - to walk to a café or the shops. I can't even go running. That is what is most frustrating to me probably. I want to run outside and not on that stupid elliptical. First world problems, I know. I'm lucky I have the elliptical at all. I could go running I supposed if I wanted to run circles around the square for an hour but this is Arles and there are still plenty of gitan men out and around who would happily annoy me if I ran anywhere in the city. So I don't go out. Nothing else is happening. For many days I haven't been motivated to write, to study, to read, to do anything but watch Star Trek reruns on Netflix. I don't even really like Star Trek all that much. Well I do, but I don't really like the version I've been watching. And yet I've been watching it non-stop almost. Yesterday I finally gave up trying to force myself to get anything done and spent most of the day in bed. I'm not sure if it helped. I've been sleeping a lot and I'm still tired. It's mostly a weird feeling because I don't feel depressed, per se, or even low on energy. Just tired. The government has been fighting about when they are going to reopen the restaurants and hotels. They would like it to be sooner rather than later as the French economy depends heavily on hospitality. Like way more than you think. But even if they do reopen everything with the borders being closed everything is still going to get hit really hard. Supposedly we'll go back on the 15th of June. I've been working off and on on my novel prep. Still working on my NaNo project. I should get back to them both. So I suppose that is all. 41 days. 20 more to go. |
| I have once again come to the conclusion that I am either a very nasty person, or I don't like people. Or maybe both. Or maybe I shouldn't be looking at Facebook and CNN.com before I've had coffee. I find I have less and less sympathy for the people who share their sob stories, who ask for advice on the expats in France groups, who complain about their neighbors throwing COVID parties, about the protesters protesting COVID and about the protesters protesting the protesters. I don't have any sympathy for any of them. Just shut up and go back to your holes, eat Doritos and drink beer and fart until you die. None of you matter. Lately I have been doing some rereading about Objectivism. The philosophy of "I don't have to care about you because I'm too busy caring about myself." At least that is how many people interpret Objectivism. That is kind of how it works, but Objectivism also assumes that people have potential to be their greatest and all people want to work to be their greatest. That's not true. I think that's why I dislike people so much. As my oboe teacher Wayne once said to me, "Some people don't mind being mediocre." It's something that has not only motivated me, but probably traumatized me. But also has a ring of truth. A social activist or someone more benevolent than myself would cite all sorts of social conundrums and constructs as to why these people are beat down into being and staying mediocre and I fully admit it's all true. People are small because we, other people, keep them small. But I still don't care. At least I can't care anymore. It's not a new thing for me, it's been developing rapidly over time. Probably has something to do with living in France because the French are very small people. Most of them anyway, I can think of a few examples of not small people, but it's rare. Anyway, this is all a bit much for 8:30am. I haven't even finished my coffee. I will finish doing my nails and then write. The last of my Amazon order arrived today. A paint by numbers kit. Sounds silly, but it's a lot of fun. Something relaxing to do with Netflix and a glass of wine in the background. Amazon has suspended all service in France. That doesn't really bother me since half the stuff I order never arrives because I don't know... the postman and delivery trucks can't find the main road that is clearly marked that I live on... I guess. And then rather than dropping it off at the post office near me, they take it to Avignon or Nimes. Because I'm going to drive 40 minutes to pick up a package that I ordered to be delivered to my house. I usually let it languish two weeks, let the post office return it, and then order it again. Sometimes it arrives, sometimes it doesn't. Refunds are constantly dropping in my bank account. You'd think Amazon might try and work something out with the delivery people in Provence, because I can't be the only one this happens to regularly. Edited to add: The problem is that I'm lonely. My husband, whom I love, doesn't really talk to me. My work-friends in Paris are not as intelligent as I am - that's not a bash on them but I can't really discuss anything with them and I have to even be careful about what I say much of the time because they won't understand and often misinterpret my point. Other friends I've made in France, while kind and talented people are so set in their ways it's hard to talk to them. I wish I had a writing group that talked about writing and books and random things. My Nano group is nice but they don't really talk about anything but NaNo. |
| We have another month to go under confinement. At least. But if we are let out mid-May, it's been announced that restaurants and hotels probably won't be allowed to open until mid-July. Mid-July. Mid-July. That's 5 months without business. I'm not sure if many restaurants will survive. At least not as they are. My restaurant is on the 6th floor of a building with some very expensive apartments inside it. My only hope is that those apartments generate enough income to help the owner re-open the restaurant. Otherwise we're probably going to resort to selling off part of the wine cellar. THAT would be tragic. And probably put at least a few of my team out of a job. I'm also beginning to get nervous about my apartment in Paris. I kind of want to ask a friend of mine to go over there and check on it, but he doesn't have a key so all he could do is stand outside the door. Plus it's a good 10 kilometers from his apartment and if he got stopped by the police, checking on my apartment is not a good enough reason to be out and he'd probably get fined. My landlords live in the same building as me, and while they are elderly, I just have to hope that if anything happens they'll find out about it and let me know. I think that even if I don't have to go back to work in May, if we are released from confinement, I'll run up to Paris for a few days to check on the apartment. I'm pretty sure I didn't turn off the bathroom fan and I know I didn't turn off the fridge. In fact in the rush to leave I'm pretty sure I forgot to do a number of things. I can't even remember if I took out the trash. And all my summer clothes are there. Most of my clothes are there. I only had one duffel bag when I left Paris. But this is a perfect time to start new writing projects. Now my internal voice can't say to me "what's the point? you're just going to forget about it when you go back to work in X weeks!" because X weeks is far enough away to accomplish quite a bit. My novel for Camp NaNo is a laugh, but it's also a very good exercise to practice writing. I have also remembered a story idea that I had many years ago but didn't know how to approach. I started doing a bit of reading on the subject and came up with an idea for the narrator, the arch of the story, and am pretty excited about it. I could have jumped right into this novel, but I've decided to keep writing my NaNo novel until the end of the month as an exercise. I do my allotted word count for the day (a bit more actually) as a writing exercise and then spend some time planning out the new novel. It's taking on a nice shape and I think that by May I should be ready to start writing. I'm trying to balance planning with leaving enough space to move about and change things when I begin writing. The last time I planned out a novel, I over planned - for me anyway - and ended up writing myself into so many corners that the novel is stilted, forced, and inorganic. It's about 200,000 words of very forced character development and story. I forced the MC and narrator to be a painter when she should have been a musician. I forced her to remain the narrator, when a third person POV or many different POV's would have been better. I cut her off from all her relatives when some contact with her brother was begging to get written. I could go back and rewrite the novel. And maybe one day I will, but it will be a massive undertaking because I'd have to reread the beast, which would be like forcing yourself to read a 500 page novel you hate, and then rewrite it from scratch. Nothing of the original save the plot can be salvaged. And the whole end is wrong. So we're not doing that this time. I'm using a few different outline methods for this novel and picking and choosing what I need to help me develop the story until I feel like I'm ready to write it. Writing a back cover blurb, letter to the editor, or a character synopsis so detailed it describes what my MC had for breakfast is not helpful to me. Neither are spreadsheets. So I'm not going to do them. It's my novel. About two years after I moved to France I met a fairly well-known British author who was doing a signing at the bookstore across the street from where I worked. I went with my boss who introduced me as a fledgling author and this novelist and I started chatting a bit. I told her that I had had some success with short stories but was looking to start writing a full-length novel but had no idea to go about it. She said the only advice she could give me was to plan it out, but that I'd have to find the plan that worked for me. I hate planning short stories. I think it's ridiculous. But more and more I do see the merit in planning out a novel. But I also see the merit in finding the planning that works for me. The snowflake method gets a bit repetitive and weird for me towards step 6 or 7. The 30-day NaNo -Prep challenge here on WDC, while it was tons of fun when I did it - was way too much. Spreadsheets seem like a good idea to help keep things in order, but I don't want to work myself into restrictions. Anyway, where am I going with this? After some 25 odd years of being a writer, I'm finally beginning to understand my process. And I'm enjoying the learning experience. Something a bit more positive than the past few negative entries I've had. I don't know what day of confinement I'm on. 31 I think. |
| Today is a beautiful spring day in Provence. The sun is just warm enough, there is a perfect cooling breeze coming down the Rhone. The sky is blue and cloudless. It is a perfect day for a long afternoon run out in the fields behind the city. But what am I doing? Sitting in my apartment. Like a good confinement baby. I know that it's beautiful out because I went out briefly to buy a few groceries that my husband and I needed to help us get through the week, which basically means cheese. I wanted to buy flour but there was none to be found still. Incredible. I know that bread is a huge food staple here in France and I know that a family of four might go through two to four baguettes a day, but people must be baking bread at an incredible rate if everytime I go to the store there is no flour. My husband has been able to get some at the larger supermarket when he goes on Mondays but apparently it's a struggle there too. I am making brioche and waiting for the dough to rise (hopefully). I wanted to make some more bread. We don't eat all that much of it, and I still have flour, but was planning on also making fresh ravioli tomorrow which will use most of what I have left. It's not that big of a deal but kind of annoying. Maybe I should out of some local mill will deliver rice flour in massive sacks. It'll be weird but at least we'll have bread. And there's got to be some place that makes rice flour, we live in the land of rice (outside of Asia). Anyway, after putting out a few work fires, I'm totally lost in what I wanted to write about here. Julien started freaking out about the restaurant and the staff and sent me a bunch of messages and emails and it's totally distracted me from this entry. So I'll just stop here. It's a nice day and I sat outside with the cats. That was probably the gist of it. |
| Depression. When it hits. It hits. I've been feeling rather depressed the past few days. Working on my story for Camp NaNo. I'm keeping up with my word count and the story is moving a lot at my typical plodding, out-of-practice pace, but it's something to do. And that's all it feels like. Something to do. I'm exercising, I'm cooking and baking. I've started to learn yoga. Occasionally I can bring myself to study wine. And all the while I ask myself, what is the point? This isn't necessarily about the confinement. I think that if I was on one of my home vacations, away from work I would feel the same way. I wrote in my paper journal a few days ago that I just don't see the point in all of this. Eventually, the confinement will be over and I will go back to work, to stress, to fatigue, to real life. I'll forget about writing and yoga and any other positive habits I might build during these weeks. I'll stop cooking because I'll be too tired and won't have the time. I'll continue to work at my job because I don't know what else I want or could do. I'll pick up smoking again. And eventually I'll die. Like everyone else. This isn't a new theme for me. I think I've been having an ongoing existential crisis since I was a child. I just don't see the point of anything when in the end it doesn't matter. Maybe one day I'll get lucky and manage to write, edit, and publish a book. Maybe someday it will happen. Though I doubt it. But what if it does? It'll just be another book in a catalogue somewhere. Forgotten and out of print. My niece and nephew will forget me. They'll have kids of their own maybe, who will have never met me and never know that I existed. Some people might say that it doesn't matter. That how you live your life is important. But is it? Is it really? I don't know. I just can't believe it. And that above anything is what holds me back from enjoying writing. From building a daily routine. From being more productive outside of work (besides the fact that I use up all my energy being productive and putting out fires at work every day). It's why I have no motivation. If I spent the rest of my off-hours playing the Sims and other computer games, eating pre-packaged food, and binging Netflix, who would care? I always say that the worst thing about my job is that I don't have a work-life balance. But I don't understand what that means for me. Anyway, those are my thoughts for the day. It's all very Death of a Salesman-esque. I envision that is what my funeral will be like. It's day 22 of confinement here in France. The restaurant FOH director called to see how I was doing. He wanted to make sure I had made it back to the south and to my husband before the trains had shut down. It was very weird. I didn't know he had my phone number. But it was also kind of nice in a way. At least he's thinking about us. I am disappointed in this entry. I wish I had something more to offer. I wish there was a solution. I'm not desperate, but I'm watching my life slide away like silk threads through my fingers. It's frustrating and sad. I'd go upstairs and hide under the blankets of my bed but a) I would like to write another 1000 words for my story today and b) Pistou the cat is up there under the blankets sleeping. This may be going a little too far in personifying my pet, but he gets cranky if he doesn't have the bedroom to himself to sleep during the day and it was already a struggle to get him to go up there and go to sleep. It's like trying to convince a completely independant and irrational child who doesn't understand a word you're saying to lay down for a nap. We don't really understand how his brain works, but the few times he hasn't been able to sleep under the blankets in isolation for most of the day we have all (me, my husband, and Dumpling the other cat) have all suffered for it afterwards. So now we try to make him go up there to sleep. But we can't close the door and lock him in because... because cats. |
| NaNo is actually going well. It's only day two, of course, but when I started this thing I only had a vague idea of the characters, the time, the place, the plot. And it's still kind of vague, but things are starting to come together and form in my mind. I don't like to plan too much when I write... a bad habit from writing too many short stories, and I like to see where the story will take itself, but obviously for a novel, I need to have at least a sort of story direction and some deeper character development, backstory, etc and it's coming into focus. Which is leg up on the last NaNo novel I did in 2018 which was a meandering, nonsensical mess. My goal is 45,000 words over 30 days, which divides to 1500 words a day. A bit less ambitious than the real NaNo, but I wanted a nice round number for my daily goal. I have 3600 words written so far. It gets me excited, it makes me feel like I accomplished something and gets me back into writing. So even if this story ends up being a fiasco, maybe when this is all over and I find myself out of a job (which might be possible) I can start writing seriously again. It has the added benefit of taking my mind off of the depressing situation around me. I don't check CNN or BFM every 30 minutes to see if something has miraculously changed in the world only to get depressed. My French NaNo group are all mostly avoiding talking about the confinement. It comes up on occasion, but I think we'd all prefer a non-confinement discussion space. Earlier today one of my colleagues sent me an email about the days she would need off when the restaurant opened again, because that's one of the things out of a thousand other responsibilities I deal with at my job. The scheduling. One of the days off she requested was the 24th and 25th of April and I sent her a message saying that I'd taken note of her email but there was no way we would be back to work before June. Well, that wasn't the best thing to say because she started freaking out. The French don't handle social distancing too well. They are social people and like to be around others. She said they started talking about when this would all be over on the news and I pointed out that that was probably so people a) respected the confinement because they think it'll be over soon, b) didn't panic and c) kept the suicide rates down. That last one is sad but probably true. If they let us out on the 15th of April - which is when it's supposed to end, I told her we'd all be back in confinement by the 1st of May. In the end I just had to calm her down so she didn't run herself into a wall. She said her roommates have been fighting non-stop and she's sick of it and going stir crazy in her apartment. Which I can understand obviously. Especially if her roommates are fighting. It wasn't the worst freak out ever, but when I crushed her hope that this would be over soon I think she had that moment of panic we all feel eventually. My husband and I talked about it today. We're pretty lucky because we're both independent, fairly solitary people, without kids, who can occupy ourselves for extended lengths of time. But at times it's even hard for us, so I can't imagine how it must be for other people. And the thought of this going on until June (which it probably will) seems like a fun extended vacation at first, but once it begins to sink in, it starts to feel surreal and overwhelming. Also, I only brought winter clothes down here and don't have anything for the summer which means when I finally can go outside I'm going to be very hot. |
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I think it's awesome that you're using that negative experience to get creative. It's hard not to just wallow when those things happen. I use a paper journal for most of my actual coping process too, but I do share bits and pieces on WDC as well.
Might try a short story a day instead. Stay safe. 
