Joe Kissell

If you’re one of the few people who read this blog with any regularity, you know that there are periodic dry spells. It’s the same with all our sites: as much as I’d love to have new posts on each of them every single day, I do have a few other things to think about, and so the projects that bring in the least amount of money tend to be the ones that spend the most time on the back burner. You know how it is. More than once I’ve written a little blurb here saying that the reason I haven’t made an appearance in so long is that I was finishing up this or that book, a bunch of Macworld articles, or whatever. And sure enough, I have been working on new books and articles in the last month too. But that’s not the real reason I’ve made so few blog posts, written about so few interesting things, and posted so few lists recently. This time I have a really good excuse.

For the last year and a half, Morgen and I have been working on the Next Big Thing, and it truly is extremely big. We haven’t said anything, except to a small number of friends, family members, and colleagues, because the outcome of our planning was too uncertain—and beyond our control. Well, today it officially crossed over from dream to reality. And the news is: We’re moving to Paris! We leave on July 1.

If you’ve ever noticed how frequently we mention France on Interesting Thing of the Day, the fact that we’re moving to Paris may not come as a total surprise. But the story of why we’re doing this, how we managed to pull it off, what we’re going to do while we’re there, and all the rest, is a long one. So we’ve been working on a whole blog about the process of moving to France and living there. We’d hoped to have that blog up and running long before now, and it’s almost ready, but we’ve been too busy actually working on making this happen to finish writing about making it happen. Stay tuned for all the details you could hope for.

The significant event that occurred today was that we finally received our long-stay visas from the French consulate. The process of applying for these visas was dauntingly long, complex, expensive, and full of ambiguities and uncertainties. But it’s necessary for anyone wanting to live in France for more than three months. We spent about a year just getting ready to apply, and we spent the last seven weeks on pins and needles wondering whether the visas would be granted or not. But, under the assumption and hope that they would be, we’ve also spent this time sorting through and packing up all our worldly possessions and making all sorts of other moving-related arrangements. Not that we’re finished yet, or even close—we’ll need every second between now and when we leave to get ready!

We are unbelievably excited about this move (though also somewhat terrified). We look forward to sharing all the details, in our forthcoming blog, in the extremely near future. And, now that we’ve overcome this big hurdle, we hope to start catching up on all those delinquent blog posts.

Just to head off a few of the most obvious questions, here are some helpful facts: (1) I will continue writing for TidBITS, Take Control, and Macworld, and we’ll continue running all the alt concepts sites (such as Interesting Thing of the Day and Spectatrix), while in France. (2) We’re taking our cat with us! (3) We have already rented an apartment; it’s located in the 11th arrondissement of Paris. (4) Our current plan, subject to change, is to spend three years in France. (5) We both speak some French, but not nearly enough. We’ll be brushing up before we leave and working on it much more after we get there.