Two Interviews, Many Tears & An Ideal Life

“I can’t breathe. I try to focus on the notepad in front of me as I madly try to write notes and keep up with the staff meeting, but my heart is pounding.

I start to hyperventilate. I take short, shallow breaths. My chest and shoulders rapidly rise and fall with every breath.

I think I might black out.”

(Listen to the story here, or keep on reading…)

A New Life in France

After living in Canada for forty years, I left my friends and family behind and moved to France to be with my new French husband, Jean-Marc. It was a whole new life in a new country and I was eager to get settled.

The big dream was to move to the farmhouse that I already co-owned. But we put off the dream to get our basic needs sorted out. First priority? Find a job. I wanted to contribute to our finances and still needed to take care of a few crippling student loans.

I found some English-teaching jobs within the first few months, but soon discovered that it would be near impossible to make a real living from this casual, as-needed work.

I created a list of everything I was after in a job:

something related to music (classical music, if possible and choral music, if possible)
a half-decent salary
situated in or near a picturesque village

The precision in my list helped me to zero in on a job posting — marketing and communications manager in a vocal arts centre. I applied, had two interviews and was offered the job. The cherry on top? It was based in a UNESCO World Heritage Site village — as well as one of les plus beaux villages de France (the most beautiful villages of France). Check, check and CHECK!

Except, it wasn’t as simple as that.

Two Interviews, Many Tears

My first interview went well enough, but I wasn’t super keen on going back for a second one, especially as it was a 10-hour round trip. Couldn’t they have figured out a way to do the interview without having me drive 1000 km for the second time in 2 weeks?

Somehow, the Administrator, Hugo, persuaded me to come for the second interview with three people in the jury: himself, Francis, the Board President and Paul, the stodgy Artistic Director. During the interview, I was offered an opportunity to ask questions.

“Paul, if you had to describe your music ensemble in three words, what would they be?”

“Work, work, work!”

“Work, work, work doesn’t seem very marketable to potential programmers. I’m looking for words that describe the quality of the ensemble.”

I paused.

“How about this: what does music-making mean to you?”

I knew I was pushing the boundaries, but I had serious concerns about the artistic integrity of the centre’s ensemble. I wanted to know that music meant something to him, that there was a transcendent feeling during his performances. But I wasn’t prepared for Paul’s response.

His fist slammed onto the table.

“I won’t disrobe and reveal myself to you. You have no right to come in here and ask me these things.”

I remained calm and tried to ask some other questions concerning stage presence. But this just angered Paul even more, and everyone was taken aback by his reaction to me.

I held it together until the end of the interview. Afterwards, Hugo accompanied me to the front gate and asked me how I felt about what had just happened.

I burst into tears.

He reached out in kindness, reassured me that I’d have very little to do with Paul in my job, and that he wouldn’t allow anyone to talk to his staff in that way. He was obviously sorry for how the interview had gone down.

But I still had the long drive back home to think about what had just happened. For five hours I sobbed intermittently and said to myself,

“Nope, nope, nope. There’s no way I’ll ever work there!”

As I arrived home, Jean-Marc came out to greet me with a big smile.

“They called. They want to hire you!”

I honestly couldn’t believe it. My reaction was still an emphatic NO. And, by the way, who leaves a job offer with a candidate’s spouse?

Hugo called the next day to do some damage control. He mentioned that they had decided to hire two people: me and another fellow, Jules. With a bit of distance, Hugo’s persuasive arguments, the necessity of a full-time salary and, quite frankly, the flattery of being chosen, I decided to accept. After all, it checked off all the points on my list, didn’t it?

“Not quite,” my intuition was telling me, but I turned the volume down on her.

This new job meant moving across France, from the Loire Valley to Burgundy, and thankfully for me, Jean-Marc was up for the move. We figured that the chances of me being offered a job in my small niche were quite rare and that he, being a gardener, would have an easier time finding work pretty much anywhere.

A New Job

I felt a mix of excitement and dread as I started my new job. I was thrilled to be associated with classical music, to head out on tour and have a creative outlet. But almost all my working life in Canada I’d been freelance or on-call, so I wasn’t used to the Monday to Friday grind. Especially here in France, where you’re expected to work unpaid hours beyond the official 35-hour workweek. I found it really restricting and was quickly looking for the escape hatch.

I eventually got used to it, but it came at a price.

My life outside work was nonexistent. Even though we were living in a beautiful medieval village in the Burgundy countryside, it was a difficult place to make new friends. There were few local activities and we didn’t feel settled. It just didn’t feel like home.

The connection to myself that I had fully explored in the year before moving to France dwindled. Any creative ideas I had were put on hold. I just didn’t have the energy to pursue them. Aside from one yoga class per week and the occasional hike, most of my exercise fell to the wayside and I could feel my joints tightening up. I worked all week. The weekends were all about getting to the grocery store and doing housework with Jean-Marc.

Where was the pleasure in all this?

And trouble was brewing at work. A power clash between Hugo and Paul created a disconcerting stench in the atmosphere. I went to work every day with a pit in my stomach and only survived thanks to a couple of friendly colleagues with whom I could commiserate. Thank goodness for Jules and Lucie!

Crisis At Work

The clash saw both Hugo and Paul leave the centre. We were forced into a merger, leaving me with twice the amount of work and exactly the same amount of pay. And maybe a wee bit of resentment! I don’t know if I was actually depressed, but I can say that I felt more than overwhelmed by work. I had no idea how to make sense of it all because I couldn’t even see it all.

I pause here, because I was actually offered an out at this point.

With the merger, I had the opportunity to leave my job with the safety net of unemployment insurance. Why didn’t I take it? Two reasons: my husband had FINALLY been offered a permanent position in a landscaping company (and I didn’t want to rock that boat) and my new boss was somebody I admired and didn’t want to let down.

Actually, there were three reasons. The third? Fear. Fear of starting something new and all it would entail.

So I stayed.

It was tough, especially in the first few months. I didn’t realise how tough until I experienced a panic attack for the first time in my life.

Panic

We were all sitting around the long meeting room table in our staff kitchen, discussing new things that would happen after the merger. It was a pleasant airy room, with tall ceiling and lots of windows and I remember the sun shining across the table.

Our new gregarious Artistic Director, Mathieu, was eager to talk about all the new events he’d planned. A chatty guy by nature, he hadn’t thought to give us any notes that we could follow. So I was frantically trying to write down dates and times of all the upcoming events. Of course I was looking at all the new events through my communication manager’s eyes and thinking of all that I’d need to do and put into place for each event. I couldn’t keep up. Mathieu just kept on going on to the next thing without leaving any time to nail down the details.

I got up to get a glass of water to try and calm down, and as I came back to the table I started to hyperventilate. I couldn’t breathe. My heart was pounding. My short, shallow breaths accompanied my chest and shoulders rapidly rising and falling. I thought was going to black out.

This must be a panic attack.

How could this be happening to me?

I felt embarrassed, mortified, and also somewhat astonished that nobody, aside from Jules and Lucie, seemed all that bothered by the fact that I was clearly in crisis. The meeting continued as my friends tried to comfort me outside.

This was a turning point. I clearly couldn’t go on like this.

Making Positive Changes

Quitting wasn’t possible. So I took a step back. And decided to put things into perspective in order to make the situation liveable.

Taking a hard look at everything in my life, I made some changes to optimize my health, my creativity and also to make some space for life outside of work. The initial plan to feel better is outlined in My Feel Better Plan, but that was only the beginning.

Could You Use A Feel Better Plan?

Send me the Feel better plan now!

A whole lot of change came out of that feel better plan. We started to travel more. We had a week in New York after a trip to see my family in Canada. Jean-Marc and I also booked a trip to London in order to attend a Philip Glass opera I had always wanted to see.

I started working with a holistic nutritionist in order to gain a better relationship with food and its effects on my mood and energy. Aquafit classes were so enjoyable that I decided to learn how to swim lengths with regular swimming lessons.

The grey winter months made me want to experience the darkest season in a positive way, so we headed to the mountains to snowshoe and cross-country ski, and absorb the light reflecting off the snow.

I made a new friend in the village who invited me for a run every other morning, rain or shine.

I also attended a meditation retreat and booked in a couple of sessions with a life coach, to explore my situation. And, as things were financially a bit better, I invested in my wellness by hiring somebody to clean our home every other week. Now I could head into the weekend without the burden of housework weighing on my shoulders.

All those positive changes made life at work much easier, but the reality was that I was still feeling stuck. That pinching anxiety just above my solar plexus was easily triggered. The security of a regular paycheque was holding me in place while my soul was crying for self-expression, autonomy, creativity and my dream life at the farmhouse.

I honestly had no idea how I’d get out of that job and into the life of my dreams.

An Ideal Life

During one of my life coaching sessions, my coach Annabelle asked me,

“What do you really want, Marianne? Imagine what your ideal life looks like. What does a typical day in that life entail?”

I’d never been specific about my dream before. It’d been just that – a dream. Wooly and ill-defined.

I got precise and into the details. I imagined renovating and living in the barn at the farmhouse, writing articles, recording podcasts, working with clients, getting creative, taking photos. This turned out to be a valuable exercise. I could imagine it therefore it could happen. I kept that vision in sight at all times and I stayed vigilant, looking for opportunities to make it come to fruition.

Every Dark Cloud

Fast-forward a number of months. Devastating news. Jean-Marc’s boss was closing down the business to move away.

Jean Marc had lost his job.

At first, this felt like a big blow. We were just getting on our feet and enjoying our life in Burgundy. Then we thought again.

This was an opportunity that could help us realize our farmhouse dream. This was the silver lining to our dark cloud.

By only searching for jobs around the farmhouse, Jean-Marc was preparing the foundation for our eventual move. It wasn’t easy – mostly because the farmhouse is in a sparsely populated rural part of France. But he did find a job! And with it, I felt safe to quit my job to follow him.

We could finally move to the farmhouse. So, nine years after I first moved to France, we did just that.

Handing in my resignation letter to my two bosses was a freeing experience. Afterwards, I felt about 1000 pounds lighter. I had finally done it!

There was an increasing distance between myself and the job. During my two months’ notice, I was able to slowly retreat from the responsibility that had weighed me down for years. Everything just rolled off my back.

I knew I was leaving them in good shape. I spent days detailing every last task and calendar deadline for the months to come. I even created a WordPress manual for the website, screen captures and all, so that anybody could navigate the back office.

The Art of Doing Nothing

In my first few months of unemployment, I was busy with the logistics of the move. But once we were settled, I found it difficult to be alone with myself.

I was so used to being busy that I’d forgotten how to do nothing.

I decided to allow myself to live without any expectations or duties for the first while. Aside from joining a new gym and buying a pass to my local pool’s spa area, I allowed myself to just be and follow my curiosity.

When I wrote to my intuition about it, this is the answer that came out:

“Listen. Explore. Play. Life is flow. Follow the flow. Have fun. Stop worrying. All is well.”

I could have pushed myself to get busy with a project, but what good could have come of that? I figured that if I let myself rest, something was bound to start flowing at some point.

And that did just the trick!

Every Day Is My Ideal Day

A few months later, the plans for my new business started to come into focus and I knew that it was coming from a place of alignment. Not only that, I started taking Italian classes, pottery lessons and helping with some local festivals. I came out of my cocoon and started spreading my wings.

Sometimes when I look back on those 7+ years in my last job, I wonder if it wasn’t just a big waste of time. But now I see it almost as a necessary phase in which I learned a lot, both in working skills and life skills. Most crucially, my true priorities came into focus. None of the lessons are lost on me.

Now I can see that I needed to learn how to find happiness and fulfilment right where I was, before I could move on and have it be a positive experience.

I now know what I want.

My ideal day that I imagined all those years ago with Annabelle, is now my every day. It may not be perfect or fully realized, but that’s what’s beautiful about it! I love my life and am thankful for every step along the way.