I believe in the adage, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. I have always lived my life according to a strict five-year plan, dutifully adding on before running out of tarmac. Like many Americans, I expected this rolling life plan would ultimately lead me to some European country house in my twilight years. And like many publishers, I imagined this house was ‘full of the patina of a bygone era’ just waiting to be restored and then written about. But dreaming is one thing, and honestly I am surprised that somehow I got here. In retrospect, getting to this point all came down to velocity and degrees. One day you decide to do something that turns you a few clicks off to the right and you continue on. After a few years, you find you’ve ended up quite a long way from where you would be if you’d gone straight. I have no idea where I would be now if hadn’t been sitting in a restaurant bar in New York City accepting a friend’s offer of their house in London for the Christmas holiday, which lead to a chance meeting, a long year of travel, a job change, selling an apartment, a one-way ticket to a country where I had only a short-stay visa, and myriad but decisive subsequent moments along the way. I accepted one short house stay and pivoted my life trajectory three degrees to the right, and forever.
