Bonne année, 2025!

A Fresh Start, Old Blogs, & Why I’m Sticking with My Own Voice

Bonne année!

It’s the new year, which means it’s time to say “bonne année” whenever you see someone for the first time in France. The entire month of January, it’s customary to say “bonne année” exactly once to each person you know. So, if you see a neighbor on January 1st, you say, “bonne année!” If you run into them again the next day? Just a regular “bonjour” will do.

It’s such a strange thing for Americans to experience—at least, it was for me. But after your first year going through it, I promise you’ll love it. Just saying “bonne année” to someone makes you smile.

Like most people, I’ve spent the past few weeks reflecting on 2024 and planning how to attaquer 2025. It’s been especially interesting because I’ve been diving into my old—and I mean OLD—Blogger posts from the last century. (Yes, I’ve been publishing these ramblings online for that long!)

I’ve also been transcribing my handwritten journals from before that into text. Luckily, I type over 100 words per minute. Unluckily, I was a lot more verbose back then. ¯\(ツ)/¯

Going through these archives has been both humbling and hilarious, making me realize just how much I’ve written over the years. It also reminds me how raw, quirky, and unapologetically me my tone was back then—crude at times, but always full of curiosity… and trying to make people laugh.

Blogging in those days was basically live journaling. No planned content… just me logging in, dumping out my brain, then moving on with my day. Later, friends and followers would comment, and we’d chat back and forth. It’s essentially what social media like Facebook should have been.

Looking back on 30 years of journal entries has been emotional and helpful. 2024 ended up being a big transition for me. I’ll get into it a little more next time. Suffice it to say that the person I was working with for several years was not happy with my decision to create my own relocation course—even though I had been talking about it for over a year—and branded me persona non grata.

We’re not enemies (that I know of), but we have parted ways, and that leads me to what’s next.

Besides rediscovering my voice, I’m pleased to find the spark inside me that drove me to start writing and publishing my thoughts online three decades ago. You can see, even back then, that I was trying to help motivate people to experience life and write about it themselves. Now, I have a Relocation Course for people wanting to move to Paris and my Journaling Course is being redesigned (because when I published it last time, I was using Roam Research and now I’m locked into Obsidian.)

All of this eventually ties into my memoir—yes, my memoir. Oh la la… It might sound melodramatic, but I’ve heard “You should write one!” from so many friends (and even random acquaintances when they hear about my journey to France.) Hey, if 30-somethings can publish a memoir, why can’t I ?

So let’s wrap this one up…

A brand-new year, a stash of 30-year-old blog posts, a dash of AI to help with my ADHD, and hopefully a renewed sense of fun in my writing. I can’t wait to share more about my life in Paris with you—stories, recipes, etc.—and who knows, maybe I’ll finally wrangle them into a memoir.

Next time, I’ll talk about some of the specific gems I’ve found in those 1995 archives—plus how I’m using AI to organize these mountains of journal entries.

Until then, thanks for reading, and here’s to new beginnings—and to keeping some of the old stuff alive.

À bientôt!