As soon as the realisation of one dream pulls into the station, you can’t help but look down the tracks for the next one

HAPPINESS IS SOMETHING we tend to experience in hindsight. We look back on a job we had, a trip we took or a place we lived, and we think, I was happy then. Chances are, we didn’t realise this at the time. We were too busy wishing that we were already somewhere else, on to the next job, trip or place, the one we were sure would be the one to really make us happy. It’s only now, in looking back, that we can see how we already were.

For most of my life, I’ve compounded this effect by living for the future. I desperately wanted to be a published writer ever since I was eight years old. It finally happened when I was 33, meaning I spent more than two decades finding more bliss in my daydreams than I ever did in the present tense of my real life. The day I was offered a book deal, I thought that was it. Now, I’d be happy. And I was – for about five minutes. Turns out that as soon as the realisation of one dream pulls into the station, you can’t help but turn to look down the tracks hoping to catch sight of the next.

Last July, I spent seven nights at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris. Think of the CCI as a kind of youth hostel for Irish writers, artists and students, if youth hostels occupied stunning 18th century buildings on the Left Bank and offered bright, airy rooms with windows that framed the same view of Parisian rooftops that inspired Hemingway and his pals. I was there to work through the copy edits on my second novel, The Liar’s Girl, the penultimate stage in getting a finished book to the bookshop shelf.

Each day, I got up with the dawn, had breakfast outside the gates of the Luxembourg Gardens, indulged in half a day’s flânerie (the art of walking aimlessly, with purpose), then went back to the CCI to write. I’d been to Paris several times before and knew exactly what I wanted to do, and that was whatever the hell I felt like. The beauty of travelling alone!

I went to the Musée d’Orsay and the Musée Rodin, but didn’t bother with the Louvre. I didn’t go to the Eiffel Tower but strolled the streets around it, looking for unexpected angles. I paid extortionate amounts for coffee and croissants at Les Deux Magots, La Rotonde and Café de Flore, not because they tasted any better than the cheaper stuff, but because these were the haunts of my literary heroes. Surprisingly, I found myself with boundless amounts of energy. The proof was in the pedometer: I was walking an average of 18 kilometres a day. Normally I wouldn’t take the stairs up a floor if there was a lift available. At home, I felt as if I was always running down my batteries. Here in Paris, I was suddenly plugged into the mains.

On my last night, I put on the only half-decent thing I’d brought with me, a €30 dress from Dunnes, and headed to the Hemingway Bar in the Ritz Hotel for some €30 cocktails.

I sat there for hours, gazing at its Hemingway swag (a typewriter, his Life magazine covers, early editions of A Moveable Feast), dreamily content. I’d planned to walk back to the CCI, but by the time I’d drained my third drink, it had started to spit with rain and darkness was falling fast. Halfway to the nearest Metro station, there came a thunderous clap. The heavens opened.

I ducked into the doorway of a bakery and, already soaked, waited for the torrent to pass.

It was there, sitting on a cold stone step, bedraggled and wet, that I realised something: I didn’t want to go home. Not just to the CCI, but to Dublin. For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t wishing it was already some theoretical, better future.

I wasn’t happy only because of something I could recall from the past. I was happy right now, right here, and, better yet, I knew it. I could feel it in every cell.

For one whole week, I’d stayed in the present tense. I’d enjoyed every bit of crusty baguette, savoured every sip of coffee, wiped up every last smear of Nutella with my crepes. Every sight, every streetscape, every unexpected view of the Eiffel Tower, or Sacré-Coeur, or even that ghastly Tour Montparnasse, had made me smile. I’d woken up every morning eager to get out of bed and start my day – because I was paying attention, eagerly and exclusively, to the now. And when I did, I could appreciate the fact that my dreams had become a reality. I could find pleasure in the simple things. I still had my goals and ambitions, but they weren’t detracting from what I’d already achieved any more. I’d managed, for a moment, to stay still, to take stock.

In Paris, finally, I was happy in the present tense. Paris had taught me how to be.