Nuits Calme de Paris, Part I

Well.

So the big move happened, and here I am now. Alone in a Parisian hotel room with the window slightly ajar and the cold night air wafting in, half-tucked in sheets and feeling terribly, terribly alone.

It's been a week since I bade my loved ones farewell and boarded a flight to Paris. I've been busy ever since - opened a French bank account, landed a nifty apartment in the 6th arrondissement, and made some new  friends who double as Singaporean colleagues from other government agencies. Day one of my new job commences on Monday, and professional first impressions suggest that the two years ahead oughta be interesting ones.

But it's nights like these - nights alone and far away from home - where I question if the decision to come here was the right one.

Months ago, I convinced myself that the exposure was reason enough to take the leap. Being well aware of my inherent predisposition towards living in comfort zones, I chose to believe that generating a paradigm shift would be a necessary step for my self-development.

I didn't just pluck the logic from the sky, mind you. There were genuine considerations which factored into why I felt this way. Feeling that I'd stagnated in terms of character development was a big one. Professional boredom with my portfolio was another. My life was a haze of jetwash, evaporating into nothingness. Like flotsam, I drifted.

No more good years spent hazing around in stasis, I declared!. A good, strong life needs be grounded in one's continued drive for self-improvement. And so it was that I committed to spending two years of solitary existence in a place far away from home, forced to part with the conveniences and creature comforts that supported my life in Singapore. I stepped into a new life rife with new experiences and a wealth of uncertainties, cut with promises of increased responsibility and self-accountability.

But on nights like these, alone and so far away from all that I love - I ask myself if this, all this, was really necessary.

I wonder if the ends will be worth the means I've chosen.

Have I risked my happiness to chase visions of a better self?

What if there is no better self?