Two Months Above a Soap Factory

I went to France to work somewhere that wasn't March in Maine. I came home and quit by text message.

A partial view from the dining table.

I rented an apartment in Villefranche-sur-Mer for two months. It wasn’t a vacation. I can work from anywhere, and this apartment was above a soap factory, with a partial view of the Mediterranean from the dining table. Most mornings I walked to the Boulangerie de la Paix for a croissant, made an espresso, and opened the laptop. I felt grounded.

From the table I could see the old clock tower on the church, with its bells ringing on the hour and the half, and a slice of the Mediterranean where I saw porpoises a couple of times. Across the way, red tile roofs, windows and doors open, laundry drying on the line. I fed the pigeons on the balcony and even named a couple of them. With the sliding doors open, a purple and gray feathered dove would walk right into the apartment while I pounded on the keyboard. And on the wind from the balcony, lavender, jasmine and lemon verbena, wafted up from the soap factory downstairs.

At that point I still had a couple of clients. One I had worked with for five years, and she finally couldn’t afford it anymore. Effective April 1st. She wasn’t joking. Maybe we’d pick it up later if things changed. I get it.

The other was a startup I was a sounding board for. With the time difference we talked once a day, six o’clock at night my time. I was doing it for free, with a promise I would get paid. And I didn’t mind. I’m a risk taker. To be honest it was not very rewarding. Even before France I felt like my work was unread and ideas brushed off. Numerous times over the course of nine months I was asked what my value was. Then I got accused of sending AI slop. By people who weren’t reading it. No pay, nobody listening, and I was getting resentful and not doing my best work. Nine months for free. Nobody made me. I kept getting on the call because I’d rather be needed than paid.

I learned something about how some of my staff must have felt, all those years I didn’t listen to them.

One morning I sat down with the espresso to answer a hundred questions about myself. What I believe, what I’m afraid of, how I work. An interview, and the interviewer was a machine. I figured I’d knock them out before lunch. It took ten days. I have told people since that exercise did more for me than a therapist, a clergyman, or a business coach. None of it was new. Years of therapy had already shown me what I was hiding from myself. But it all came up at once, at that table, and I knew it was time to blow up my life again.

Since I sold my company, Loco Gringo, and came back to the States I had been trying to fit in. I built an AI app for hospitality and shut it down. There are all these consultants and coaches, and I thought I could be one of them. Can I do it? Yes. But the tedium of picking up clients, building frameworks, one-on-one calls. I got a couple of consulting gigs, lovely people. I cared more about their businesses than they did. Which is not the compliment it sounds like. Nobody hired me to do that. Wrote business articles, ebooks, and gave them away hoping somebody found something useful in them. It was busy work, and it left me empty. Not uncaring. Just meh.

And the reeled-in, vanilla Kay was not making money. So why not bring out the mouthy twin. She doesn’t give a shit.

Some mornings at that table, some of the thoughts I keep buried came up in the answers. I went back to school after I sold Loco Gringo so I wouldn’t start having gin for breakfast. The master’s degree was never a crown, only a validation, and I’d known it the whole time. I tried to push through it the way I push through everything. White knuckled. Then I shut the computer and sat there and tried to find the courage to look at it.

On day two, looking out at the water, I typed: is my life held together with duct tape and wire ties?

That’s a cave diving joke. Duct tape in some cases could be considered a permanent repair, and we went through wire ties by the bag. Zip ties, the rest of the world calls them. I have always been a bit of a gear or gadget gal. It turns out I collected diplomas and certifications the same way. In case the first one failed. I do love to learn. But that’s not what the stack was for.

Every afternoon I took a break. No matter where I walked, La Régence, the train, the waterfront, I went past the soap factory, doors open for the passers-by. I walked up to La Régence, where the locals hang out at the restaurant facing the street. The retirees with a coffee, a few women with their little dogs and a spritz. I had stayed a couple of nights there on an earlier trip. The rooms were basic, but I was traveling alone and I felt welcome and safe, and some mornings I still went there for breakfast, ten euros for a coffee, a croissant, and juice. The owner worked the bar some days. He recognized me and knew I’d order one Aperol spritz and take a sidewalk table. He spoke to me in French and broken English. I spoke back in a mélange of English and French, and Spanish always crept in. Regulars, strangers, the bartenders, all of them swapping stories of the day. Me at my table, watching people live. Then I walked back to the apartment and got on a call to be a sounding board for free.

My daily Aperol spritz in Villefranche.

One night I tried to push things ahead, being the leader that I am, and it backfired. I overstepped. After I got home, I quit with a text message.

I can skydive, cave dive, get on an overloaded boat in Tanzania to a place I had never heard of, and all of that is a walk in the park compared to saying who I am out loud.

That was March. I write stories now. Anyone can write about business, and let’s face it, it’s kinda boring.

The soap factory is Terres Dorées. I had walked past it on every trip to Villefranche and never gone in. This time I walked past it several times a day for two months. A few days before I left, I went in. Bought gifts, and several bars for myself. I use it every day.

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