"For rent: Beautiful 1 bedroom in Foggy Bottom."
I decided to move to the French Riviera on Tuesday June 28th and rented my apartment on Saturday July 2nd.
The next call was to my boss. I heard the words escaping from my mouth, felt my brain forming the sentences and pushing them through my lips, but it didn't feel real.
"I'm sorry to bother you on a Saturday," I said. "I've decided to move to France."
As someone who feels most comfortable with lots of plans and back up back up plans for the back up plans, this decision was quite a departure. After seven years working as a television news producer in Washington, DC, I was finally jumping ship.
After returning from a friend's wedding in Israel, I'd taken to spending work days combing through pictures of myself and my friends baking on the beaches of Tel Aviv. For whatever reason, I couldn't pull myself back into the reality of my life in Washington.
I felt a growing repulsion to my ergonomic desk chair, my username and my password.
It was my ex-boyfriend's idea for me to move to France, live in his apartment and learn French.
The last time we'd seen each other was at the airport in London, waving goodbye after my final stay in his apartment in Nice nearly two years before, but when we saw each other in Israel it was clear the flame had never fizzled. We rekindled our romance.
I should note here that while my ex-boyfriend's apartment is in Nice, he is generally not: He reports from the West Bank and Gaza. That being said, there is a direct flight from Tel Aviv to Nice every day. It shouldn't be long until the ex- erodes.
I had not planned to be a Washingtonian.
I moved to D.C. my final semester of college at UC Santa Cruz. My dream was to work for NPR, so I signed up to be an intern at the local DC affiliate, WAMU, and once I completed all the credits I needed to graduate, I decided to stay on in the nation's capitol and try to get a job in broadcasting.
Through random good luck, I landed an internship at the BBC's Washington bureau, which turned into a few freelance shifts, then permalance, and then after a few years a staff position.
I was living the dream for a journalist, working for one of the most well respected news organizations on the planet, in a city where stories never dry up.
A decade later, I found myself suddenly desperate for change. If I had not planned to live in D.C., I didn't plan on abandoning it either.
But I will.
I see my life stretching out in front of me and want it to look different. This is my chance. Now all I have to do is wrap up my adult life and ship it off to the Cote D'Azur.