Is there still time for the ultimate adventure?

 I'm now at an age where I feel the need to do something significantly different if I want to spend my last remaining years feeling alive and fullfilled, engaged with my surroundings and in tune with the culture. I will have to leave New Zealand but the process will be challenging. Although born in NZ and having spent most of my life here I've just never felt I belonged or succeeded. It was just about survival. 

What I am seriously contemplating is pretty risky at my age and most people wouldn't consider it but I am needing this.

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Through some pretty disastrous circumstances while living and working in Auckland in 2010, I discovered my career there had been utterly sunk by self-serving ‘supercity’ National politicians and I would be unlikely to find work but would consequently lose my home. What to do? Take drastic measures, all detailed in a memoir I published Follow my Heart in 2014, under the name of Frances Lawson (an ex-boss was threatening me). With just a suitcase (all other belongings of a lifetime had to be jettisoned) I finally stood on French ground.

I lived and worked in France for over 7 years. It was extremely difficult, not being an EU citizen and with never any reliable, stable employment, abused and caught in a media story of educational and political corruption, (yes, really!). I stuck it out, suffered the fonctionnaires and refused to give up because I discovered that France really was where I felt most ME and I was challenged, yes, but never bored. I did not want to leave. I wanted to stay but NZ had other ideas. Despite meeting all criteria for superannuation before I left and paying taxes for more than 40 years, I discovered you must be permanently living in NZ to even apply for it.

My life and relationships and work in France had to be demolished but in the meantime, my persistence had resulted in a letter from President Holland informing me I had achieved the holy grail, French citizenship. So now I had the right to stay but not the financial means to retire there.

Back to the Southern hemisphere I was obliged to go in 2017. Alone and unemployed I built a house, created a garden and tried everything I could think of to fit back into NZ. Seven and a half years later, still alone and unemployed I can say that something is very much missing in my life and I am troubled.

 At my time of life most women are in their stable bubbles with a husband or boyfriend and grandchildren providing interest. Not me, which is why I am contemplating doing something highly stressful and financially risky. Well, if life is comfortable why would you take risks?

So this year I will be going to France alone for a few weeks during a NZ winter to see how I still feel about the place and is it really feasible in practical terms for me to find a way back to a life that was important to me. France has changed and so have I. Laws and rules which control our lives change. I will be stepping into financial hardship, that is certain, but I have hope that something interesting might just come along.

A life in France would never be easy in any way but as I get older it seems that experiences matter a little more than material things. I have proved I can survive with almost nothing. As I age and health gradually breaks down I feel I have to make this fact-finding mission NOW. I need to know if I can find my niche there. I'm determined to move back to France asap. There will be much pain but a foot in two camps doesn’t work. 

I am sadly contemplating leaving my daughter back in Canterbury and the lovely house and garden I created in Rolleston. I tried to fit in and keep busy, I really did. I was badly let-down by a number of people I had thought were my friends here (far from it) and the opportunities that might have arrived just didn't. I have been bored and lonely.  I can't change my life for the better sitting around waiting for something good to happen. It hasn't, so I have to save myself and change my life entirely, again.

I will do a few wee touristy things while I'm over in France - well, it's so easy to do that in Europe. I've organised to take a couple of line-dance classes while there to see how it works and how difficult/or easy it might be to fit in. 

I will reconnect with a lovely ex-colleague and friends and the places I used to frequent, the language, and the fascination of French supermarkets. I'll investigate how I can find my new home and how to fix it up cheaply. Where do things stand in France regarding taxes and government admin, the health system for retirees? I’m a lot older this time around. Then I'll come back and prepare to sell up. I've already had real estate appraisals done and moving quotes prepared. And so, dear Reader, watch this space. There are new adventures ahead.