How do you know when it's time to settle?

Or the alternative title “The challenge of standing still when you’re addicted to change”

It’s 11am and I’m sat at my kitchen table in my 2-sizes-too-big sweat pants, my oversized only-to-sleep-in t-shirt and my can’t-get-the-stain-out-it hoodie. Winter mode is activated. Usually, or before (when it was still light after 4.30pm), I’d go to the café en bas de chez moi to write. It was an oh-so-continental habit which gave me a daily thrill of living in Paris.

“Look at me with my café crème and word doc” I’d muse vacantly whilst typing a What’s App to my mum and simultaneously scrolling through Tik Tok.

I used to put on a wired bra, floral perfume and jeans with a structured waistband, just to go and answer my emails. Just to work at a place other than my flat. And all this before midday. Now, one year later, I resent even having to make the colossal journey from my bed to my kitchen table.

As I reach behind me and blindly flick on the kettle, Glamorous Paris Me feels like a distant memory. What happened to her? Is she just hibernating or was my initial burst of writing-in-brasseries simply the short lived thrill of a new city?