Life and failure

I still pinch myself every day that we get to live this life and I never take it for granted because I know I've been struggling for so long in my corporate career and after a minor car accident at 21 that had a major impact on my physical condition. I know that all these talks about success and failure back in the day when I worked in recruitment at an American strategic consulting firm, it didn't speak to me at all like all these things about Michael Jordan being successful because he failed a thousand times. I couldn't really relate to any of that. I mainly felt very much like a failure. My life was like a succession of failures of jobs I didn't like after two months, jobs I couldn't keep, kind of waiting for the moment where I would actually feel accomplished. I eventually only reached that once I started my business and had the freedom to do things on my own terms and also being more respectful towards what my body needed after the car accident and I still remember vividly the doctors saying to me at 23 that I would never be able to provide for myself and always be dependent on either my partner or my parents. I learned early on to define failure and success in a different way. Failure is not falling down or not succeeding. It's refusing to get up and start again and try something different. I decided to figure out what I needed to get back to work and provide for myself since I had no other option as I didn't receive any welfare. Long story short, I really learned to honor what my body needed and what my soul needed and started a business which I grew gradually and that now enables me and my family to live this beautiful quiet life that honors what I need to be okay and feel good. But I failed many times before getting there and I was reflecting on all of this when I epically failed in trying another recipe for our fall menu. I wanted to make sweet potato gnocchis and yeah, they didn't make it to the menu. Let's keep it short. Oh my gosh, there are so many weeds everywhere. It's incredibly overwhelming. I was talking to somebody. She has a really nice YouTube channel, our French country friends. They're renovating a gorgeous house as well and we were having I think kind of the same reflection the past week that living like this and being the keeper of a place like this and renovating a farmhouse like this, it's not a goal, it's not a project, it's a lifestyle. That is something that I have really realized or come to realize in the past three years. It's really a choice to be wanting to live like this, to be putting in the work. I mean of course you could leave it all and not touch anything and then the whole garden will be overgrown and you'll just not have the same experience living here yourself. But it's not the kind of thing that I'd foreseen. It's not the kind of thing that I thought would come with living like this. But I don't think it's something that I want to change. I just need to understand that things take time. But I think as long as you can lean into that and just realize, you know, it takes time. Just do what you can today and do the rest tomorrow. You don't have to get it all done. It's really not an end goal. It's a process and it's a journey and it's a lifestyle to be turning this place into a dream home and to be keeping it as well. Just to maintain the maintenance of it. Yeah, she likes rolling in the gravel. Be like a cat. Just enjoy. Do what makes you happy. Do what makes you feel good. But then here are my weeds. I already did all this part of the terrace here. This is our camera zoomed in. Now let's see. This is our terrace. But then here it just starts getting worse. Done most of it here. Look, there is so much. It's everywhere and it's really getting much worse here. Just look. And I'm afraid if I don't take it out before the fall and winter, all this is just going to be overgrown next spring. Sometimes I wish I was a cat and I would have this life. Look at her. I know some people on this channel don't like cats. You'll just have to fast forward. The woman from our French country friends, she and her husband, they just say every night after dinner they spend 45 minutes like a date. I'm going to suggest that to Olaf tonight. That might be good. And it always feels less overwhelming when you're not the only one doing it. We're not doing it alone. One of the things I really find challenging about living in France is the paperwork. In the Netherlands everything's fast and efficient. I don't think that's the case in France. But in the trade-off, even with things feeling slower and less efficient here in France, I would always choose this life again.