A blank page in front of me

Hi everyone. This is my first “Crónica del Lunes” of 2017 and I take it as an opportunity to review the past year. What is behind “A French in Mexico”?

I spent the first 6 months of the past year in Paris, the place that I consider as my home city. I finished my Master’s courses, lived one of the most importation inundation of the city, packed and stocked a certain number of personal belongings (that I currently miss a lot such as my books especially) and reached Mexico for the second part of the year.

It has been a hard year. Achieving a degree and changing of country is not something that easy. For the last 6 months, I struggled with the Mexican Immigration to obtain a working permit and I didn’t manage to be directly invited by a company to work for them (which would certainly facilitate things…). My French State Diploma of Nursing, my experience as a Deputy Director of Nursery and my Master in International Business simply don’t interest. I intended to give French classes in the same institution where I studied my Master but even this failed…Companies don’t want to have to deal with the Immigration, even if it simply consists in giving me a concrete job offer. I will be the one to deal with the Immigration, again…I even don’t talk about a traumatizing experience that occurred during the recruitment process of a company that I won’t cite here…However I am thinking to write an article about it. So, no, 2016 has not been easy, from far.

But 2016 is also the year of my engagement. And my wedding, or I should say my two weddings (the civil one in Monterrey, the religious one in Paris) are in front of me for 2017. It’s pretty curious for someone like me who has always stated that she will never get married…I know that many people don’t understand my choice. “She must be pretty weak for having accepted to marry a Mexican guy that she doesn’t know for such a long time”. “She must be pretty weak for having accepted to live in Mexico for him, for making this sacrifice”. I try to not speak to those people. My choice is difficult enough to not have to deal with people who try to knock me down.

Some people ask me if I regret my choice. This is a hard question. Sometimes yes…I fought so much to arrive where I am, to get my Master when I started as a simple nurse…and if I did it, it’s because I had professional projects, the same projects which are incompatible with Monterrey, Nuevo Leon – Mexico. Everything of what I fought for seems suddenly having lost its sense…It is a sacrifice. I also miss my friends, my family…But well, it’s not as if my family and I were so close. I wish that things may be different, but it is as it is. They are not trying to reach me every week and I got tired to be the only one running after them. I finally decided to be more philosophical: I will speak to them when I will speak to them, I will see them when I will see them. But I won’t run after them, anymore. So, yes, sometimes I regret but hopefully not always.

I wouldn’t say that I deeply appreciate my new city but it is as it is. There are some good things and there are things less good, as everywhere. On the other side, I have someone besides me that I love and who loves me. I have a friend, I have a confident, I have a partner of travels, discoveries, debates, a shoulder on which resting, crying, I have a partner in crime, I have a partner in life. And I have a blank page in front of me. No company hired me? Well, let’s create something new. Don’t I have any skills because I didn’t manage to be hired in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon – Mexico? Ah yes, but many will talk to me about productivity. This famous productivity…This famous profitability which leads our world…After these 6 months in Mexico I cannot stand that I am doing something profitable, for sure, but at least I am productive.

I realized that after all these years of obstinacy and relentlessness I always meet a new obstacle to my professional projects, and I start to believe that life is actually showing me that it’s probably because I should take another path. Maybe all of those circumstances are not by accident.

Past is past. I made my choices and for sure I can do new ones. But I also think that we never obtain anything, that we never go anywhere without struggling. We need to be consistent, we need to try, again and again. And only after having tried, having failed, and having tried again, we have the right to give up.

For 2017, I have this blog to develop, plenty of articles to write and plenty of pictures to post. I want this blog bigger. I have a book to achieve. I have a business to launch. I have two weddings. I have to travel: a week-end in the mountains and a trip to Paris to start, a road-trip in Yucatan in April, another trip to Paris in June, maybe another one in New York…I have a blank page in front of me. I just have to write it.

I wish to all of you, who follow A French in Mexico, a wonderful year 2017 and many blank pages to write. It’s up to you!