We’re taking the “funemployment” thing to the next level.
A couple of months ago we were sitting in the Long Beach apartment, and I had a sudden inspiration.
“Hey! Why can’t we sit around and do nothing … somewhere else … as well as we can here? Like, say, in Paris?”
And I picked Paris, City of Light, etc. not because it’s glamorous and chic and a moveable feast — though it is all that — but because my wife has friends and friendly former co-workers living there. Here.
Perhaps one or two of them would be on vacation in, say, August (the traditional month for vacance, in France), and we could crash in their apartment. Water the plants. Maybe take care of a pet. Maybe we could arrange an apartment swap. And all it would cost us is the airfare.
Well, it all worked out. As if it were preordained, or something.
Here’s how:
We started checking with Leah’s friends in Paris. Who would be gone in August? For how long? E-mails went out. We looked at airfares.
And things began falling into place.
A former Leah co-worker, now living in the U.S., has an apartment in the Marais, in the 4th arrondissement. And it would be available for a chunk of August.
Now we’re talkin’.
Another former co-worker, now retired and dividing time between two apartments in France, already was in the States, visiting and touring. We tracked her down in Missouri.
Would she be interested in extending her stay in the States by, say, a month? And staying in our apartment in beautiful downtown Long Beach, hard by the cool Pacific Ocean … while we stayed in her apartment in Paris? A swap, that is, with no money changing hands?
Sounds good! said the former co-worker.
And here we are.
As far as employment goes (and the need to get back there, eventually), we figured one of three things will happen.
1. As soon as we left the U.S., one of us would get a job offer. Doesn’t it seem to work that way? When you actually plan to do something else … that’s when someone finally calls?
2. Maybe, just maybe, the one of us who is fluent in French can find a job here, in Paris, while actually on the premises and available for interviews, and we could Just Stay.
3. Or, if nothing happens, on the job front, nothing has been lost. Instead of spending a month in Long Beach looking for work and not finding any … we were in Paris. For a month. Not a bad trade, n’est-ce pas?
So, here we are. The one major expense — airfare for two — already has been paid off. (Though we may wish we had that money, a few months from now. Yes. Could happen.)
In the meantime, we are all about funemployment, and this is as good a place to do it as any. Like crossing over from the Rive Droite to Ile de la Cite, just before sunset, and going from there to the Ile St.-Louis, and listening to the buskers and watching tourists line up for tiny scoops of Berthillon ice cream … and then coming back to the apartment to welcome a friend over for a modest bottle of Cote du Rhone and pistaches and amandes and talking past midnight. (Why do the French love philosophers while Americans can’t even name one currently living?)
Also, we have alerted nearly all our acquaintances in town, declaring ourselves available for dinner parties … and already have gotten a few bites. Yes, literally and figuratively.
Meantime, subsistence in Paris is not particularly expensive. Once the housing situation is resolved, of course. A guy can live on a baguette and half a bottle of wine. A girl can live on a falafel sandwich and the other half a bottle of wine. As we did on Day 1.
We can’t be the only people displaced by The Great Print Implosion of 2008-09. I imagine others are out there doing what we do. Some of them might even have gotten generous severance packages that make it even less of a financial risk.
While here, I won’t be utterly shiftless and aimless. I could play my clarinet for tips on one of the bridges over the Seine … but instead I will continue this blog, with some Gallic perspectives on sports and life, and work on my second blog — Countdown to South Africa, which I’ve had up for a couple of weeks now. Go check it out, please. Sign up for the “Free Kick” bonus daily tidbit!
For the casualties of the print collapse … perhaps we should look at this as an opportunity, not a curse. Think big in a small way. Do something unusual that doesn’t cost much. Do it now, while you have time for the first time in your adult life.
This could be a blessing, absolutely. Instead of riding the newspaper industry into the ground, some of us jumped (or were pushed off) before the final crash.
Excuse me. The Luxembourg Gardens are calling my name.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Emily S. // Aug 5, 2009 at 10:12 AM
JEALOUS! I mean, jaloux!
My “funemployment” is taking place in stifling Washington, DC, and isn’t particularly fun since my savings was blown on graduate school expenses. I subsist on p/t work at Banana Republic, aimless hours on an eternal thesis, and consulting contracts that trickle in.
Paris — and, more specifically, the wine — sounds tres bien right about now!
🙂
(FYI, my own “funemployment” will start in September; my parents have selected me to receive a prestigious fellowship. So bring on the vino!!!)
2 Jon // Aug 5, 2009 at 3:31 PM
If you’ve not been before, you should definitely check out the D-Day Museum in Caen. Absolutely amazing.
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