Traveling to Paris reignited my old passions

Many know that … I love traveling. Honestly, I get antsy if I’m in one place for too long … especially if I find that place a bit boring (cough Boston, *cough* Tulsa, *cough*, most of America). I took the opportunity to go to Paris in December, as detailed in a prior blog post. In this post, I want to talk about how traveling to Paris freshened my mindset, instilled inspiration, and reignited passions which seemed to take a backseat lately.

I find it a bit hard to articulate my mindset with this motivation/inspiration, because this is more of a feeling rather than something easily put into words.

Paris felt like a reset for me, and one I desperately needed. Since moving to Tulsa, I’ve felt an intense lack of inspiration. Some of my closest friends know that I’m always striving to achieve personal goals and work on self projects, be it writing novels, practicing languages, reading a bajillion books, updating my website, or releasing a podcast (soon to come!) But for many months (really since I moved here), I have felt a crippling lack of motivation. I’m sure some of it comes from my being depressed living in Tulsa, and some of it may come from the fact that my work shift starts at 1 a.m., and I’m essentially nocturnal and … barely sleep. Regardless, I had been falling behind on a bunch of personal projects and simply losing my passions.

Thankfully, a week in France was a welcome reset.

Being in such a city with such rich culture and historically significance was like a wakeup call. France reminded my of my love of learning languages. It made me want to whip out my Japanese textbooks and bury my nose in them. Paris sparked an urge to relearn French—it reminded me just how elegant, romantic, and smooth the language is. (I’ve been doing Duolingo classes to ease myself back into French and see how much I’ve retained after not using the language for over six years.) Even just taking the metro, I heard dozens of different languages, which was so beautiful, despite the mundaneness of the metro.

In Paris, all I wanted to do was sit in a cafe, nibble a pastry, sip a drink, and lose myself in a novel all day. The museums made me want to go home and read articles, watch movies, or listen to lectures about history.

I’m not quite sure why being in another city motivates me so much to explore my passions and learn more. And I’m not exactly sure why Tulsa demotivates me so much. Again, it’s extremely difficult to put to words. But I do know that traveling internationally and immersing myself in other cultures and ways of life, moves me back towards my interests. So, I’ll just keep doing that.