Letters #3: The Dream Day

Bonjour, my friend,

In my first two letters, I shared where this dream began.

The childhood holidays. The little seed that was planted all those years ago. The moment I realised that building an online business had quietly opened a door I hadn’t even known existed.

And we will come back to that story. But for now, I thought I’d put a pin in it and skip ahead. Because before I tell you more about how we got here, I want to show you what “here” actually looks like.

This morning, I woke up naturally. No alarm clock blaring beside the bed. No sudden rush of panic about what time it was. No mental checklist already racing through my mind before my feet had even touched the floor.

Just silence. Well, almost silence.

The birds had already started their morning conversation outside, and somewhere in the distance I could hear the gentle hum of a tractor beginning its day. I lay there for a few moments, looking out at the sunshine creeping through the shutters, before eventually deciding it was time to get up.

Not because I had to. Simply because I wanted to.

Most mornings, my husband makes me a cappuccino. It’s become one of those little rituals that I never knew I would treasure quite so much. Coffee in hand, I wander out onto the terrace and settle into my favourite chair. From there, I can see right across the Black Mountains.

The view changes every day. Sometimes the hills are crisp and clear against a bright blue sky. Sometimes they disappear behind a veil of mist. Today they were glowing softly in the early sunshine, the colours already deepening as the day began to warm.

And so I sit. Coffee in one hand. Phone in the other.

Thinking. Dreaming. Planning.

Sometimes I check in with my team in the Philippines, who are already well into their working day by then. We exchange messages, solve problems, move projects forward and make plans for what’s next.

Other mornings, I simply sit for a while and let my mind wander. It’s amazing how many ideas arrive when you give them room to breathe. Eventually, I make my way into my office. There are clients to coach. Trainings to deliver. Content to create. Decisions to make.

I still work hard.

That’s something people often assume changes when you create a different lifestyle. It doesn’t. The work is still there. The difference is that the work now fits around my life, rather than my life fitting around my work. And that changes everything.

By lunchtime, the sun is usually high in the sky and the temperature has started climbing. Some days I’ll make a fresh baguette, put together a simple lunch and sit outside with my husband. Some days I wander down to the pool and spend twenty minutes floating quietly on a lilo, looking up at a cloudless blue sky.

And yes, occasionally the sun lounger wins. Occasionally it shouts louder than my laptop. Those are the days when I remind myself that this was the whole point.

Not to escape work. Not to retire. But to have a choice.

Some afternoons, my energy is low and I finish early. Other days I find myself completely immersed in something creative. Hours disappear without me noticing, and before I know it the sun is beginning to dip behind the hills and it’s nearly seven o’clock.

The beautiful thing is that both days are equally acceptable. I don’t force myself to sit at a desk simply because a clock tells me I should. And I don’t feel guilty for stopping when I need rest. I work with my energy now, not against it.

And if I’m honest, that has probably been one of the greatest gifts of this entire adventure. What’s interesting is that life didn’t always look like this.

In fact, just before we moved to France, we’d signed a lease on our own office in Devon. We loved that office. We painted it. Furnished it. Made it feel like ours. My clients would travel down for VIP days and we’d spend hours planning, dreaming and mapping out their businesses together.

For the first time, work had a home outside our home. Every morning we’d get into the car, drive there and settle in for the day. And every evening we’d leave at five o’clock. Not because there was necessarily nothing left to do, but because that was what a working day looked like.

That’s what people did.

You arrived in the morning and left in the evening. Simple.

What we didn’t realise at the time was that our little twenty-mile-an-hour dream of moving to France was about to become a seventy-mile-an-hour dream.

Things happened faster than we expected. Much faster. So fast, in fact, that we ended up paying for the office for another year after we’d already moved here. At the time it felt frustrating. Now it just makes me smile. Because when I look back, I realise that office represented something much bigger.

It represented the life we thought we wanted. The life we thought made sense. The life we’d been taught was normal.

And yet here I am now, writing this letter from a completely different version of reality. Before we moved, I made a promise to myself.

Within two years, I wanted my business to support a three-day working week.

Not because I wanted less ambition.
Not because I wanted less impact.
But because I wanted more freedom.
Eighteen months later, I’m not quite there yet. But I’m close.

Mondays and Fridays are often half days now. My diary has more white space in it than ever before. And every month I feel myself moving a little closer to the life I imagined when all of this was still just a dream.

Which brings me to you.
What would your perfect day actually look like?
Not the version you’re supposed to want.
Not the version that sounds impressive at a dinner party.

Your version.

Would you spend the middle of the day walking through the woods?
Would you take long lunches?
Would you travel?
Paint?
Write?
Would you work three intense days and take four completely off?
Or perhaps you’d create something entirely different.

Maybe your dream doesn’t look anything like mine. And that’s perfectly okay. Because this isn’t really about France. It isn’t about swimming pools or sunshine or terraces overlooking mountains. It’s about choice. It’s about creating a life that feels like yours.

So today, I simply want to leave you with the question.
If there were no rules, no expectations and no limitations, what would your ideal day look like?
Because long before you build your next chapter, you have to allow yourself to imagine it. And sometimes, that single act of imagination is where everything begins.

À bientôt, my friend,
Deb
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Letters from France

Stories, lessons, and reflections for entrepreneurs building a business that gives them more than income... it gives them freedom.