When I was in France over the summer, I spent a day with a friend building a paddock for his horse. We drank €2,50 beers brewed by Gabriel, another friend, and talked in broken English (on his part) and broken French (on mine) about whatever the hell we wanted in between. On our last beer, sitting in his backyard where wild strawberries and parsley grew, I talked about why people here didn't want to leave the countryside.

He waved an arm nonchalantly and said, "Why would I want to leave? This is paradise."

That's when I knew what kind of life I wanted to have. In all my years, in all the cities I've lived and visit—London, Singapore, Tokyo, San Francisco—I've never once had someone so lightly, so casually say that their life was paradise. I never imagined that it was possible to sit in your own garden and be so unconsciously content, and to be able to call your home a paradise.

I want that. I don't want a life of waking up at seven in the morning to dread going into the office five days a week. I don't want to have to save up my off days and board a plane to find paradise. I want to build a home I can call paradise.