“How did you end up in Paris!? You’re so lucky.”
A friend from Australia said to me when we caught up last month. She was genuinely amazed. Sydney to Paris. “Just like that”.
“How did you get a job there? What about the residence permit? The paperwork? The language? Your business? Your whole life in Sydney?“
And I couldn’t help but wonder: is it really luck? Or is “luck” just the word we use when we only see the “after” photo?
Let me be honest. There has been luck involved. Of course. Passports, timing, the right conversation at the right moment. I won’t pretend otherwise.
But here’s my confession: a bigger part of it is that I chose it. Again and again.
I have a habit of disrupting my own life, usually right when it’s going well. And almost every one of those disruptions meant something had to give.
It didn’t happen overnight. The seed was planted 4 years ago.
Here’s what I mean.
—
Sydney, September 2022
Here’s the part people don’t usually expect.
I left Sydney when things were going well. I had my community there. My business had just had its first 15k week. I was also working as a media advisor for a local MP and starting to gain exposure in the Sydney politics world. On paper, it was all coming together.
And right at the height of it, I knew I wanted to be somewhere else.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want the life I had. I did. It’s just that there was something I wanted more.
Which, if you’ve ever felt it, is a very inconvenient feeling to have when everything is going right.
But I went anyway.
And no, I didn’t have a grand plan. I wasn’t picturing a happily-ever-after in Europe.
The September-2022 me just wanted to go. To explore. To be there. That was the whole plan.
—
The in-between, February 2023
Three months of travelling/living in Europe (旅居) later, I realised I didn’t want to leave.
What came next was a slightly frantic period of googling long-stay visas. I wanted a way to stay for a year without enrolling in a degree or taking a job I didn’t want. I just wanted to keep running my business, only from Europe. (I was also too old for the working holiday visas at that time 😬)
After a month-long research, February-2023 me landed on what felt like the perfect answer: a digital nomad visa in Croatia.
A base for up to a year, while I explored and waited for the next chapter to show itself.
—
Croatia, August 2023
Six months into my time in Croatia, I knew I was done with the digital nomad life.
As beautiful as Croatia was, I knew it wasn’t going to be home. But it had done its job. It gave me space, distance, a new way of looking at my life, a soft landing for a big transition, and friendships I still cherish to this day.
By the end of it, I was ready to go back to my “real world.”
And this time, I had a clearer answer. I didn’t want to go back to Sydney (yet). I wanted to live in Europe as a proper resident first.
Somewhere more cosmopolitan. Somewhere I could build.
—
The Netherlands, 2023 – 2026
So I set my sights on the Netherlands. And just like that, I was back to researching how to stay, legitimately, all over again. Immigration agencies. Consultations. Spreadsheets I’d rather not talk about. 🤫
In the end, the verdict was: the most straightforward route was paid employment, with an employer sponsoring my residence permit.
So I went and got a job. And then I moved.
And then life did the thing life does when you finally stop trying to control it.
I met someone. We had a lot of fun. We moved in together. We then bought a house. I formed my own social circle. I liked being an IB teacher. Things were taking shape.
__
And then, Paris disrupted my life (again), 2026
Two and a half years in, when everything felt settled, my partner was offered a secondment to Paris. The kind he’d always wanted. The kind that’s almost too good to say no to. And one we could do together.
We knew what it meant: disrupting a life we genuinely loved.
Oh, and paying expensive Paris rent on top of a mortgage in the Netherlands. (Yep.)
But we both really, really wanted to go. (I mean… it’s Paris!)
So almost three years after landing in the Netherlands, here I am. Freshly moved to Paris, and taking the train back regularly to enjoy our home in the Netherlands too.
__
So, was it luck?
When people say “you’re so lucky,” what they see is the ending. Paris. The croissant version of the story.
What people don’t often see is the in-between. The endless visa searches and paperwork. The things I gave up while they were still good. The versions of me who didn’t know where they’d land, and went anyway.
None of this happened all at once (一點到位). Not one part of it.
I didn’t go from Sydney to Paris. I went from Sydney to “let’s just see,” to Croatia, to the Netherlands, to a house, to a relationship, and then, finally, to Paris. Every step only made sense once I’d taken the one before it.
And every disruption has taught me something about who I am and what I need. Lessons I don’t think I could have learned by staying put in one place my whole life.
That’s not to say staying in one place your whole life is wrong. For many people, it’s exactly the right life. It’s just not been mine, and I’ve come to cherish that.
If there’s one lesson I keep relearning, one disruption at a time, it’s this:
Life rarely falls into place all at once. We don’t get to see the whole path from the starting line. We get the next step. Then the next one.
And sometimes the next step means disrupting a life that’s perfectly good, because something in us knows there’s something we want more.
So we keep choosing, even if choosing means it costs us something.
So if you’re sitting in a life that looks fine on paper, and there’s a quiet voice saying I want to be somewhere else, you don’t need the whole plan. You don’t need to know where you’ll end up.
You just need to be willing to take the first step, and trust that the next one will show up.
Mine did. Eventually. In Paris. And I know the story is still unfolding. ✨
Leave a comment