The first tagline of this blog was “I dream of quitting my desk job and doing this instead” (raise your hand if you’ve stuck around from so long ago).
Some of you were already here when I first downshifted and then quit my desk job, all because I knew that working remotely would allow me to go back to that nomadic lifestyle I loved so much during my youth, when I lived in London, Madrid, Dublin, and Slovenia.
Here’s what happened when I did one thing that is totally out of my comfort zone.
Real life feels so empty after spending the first half of my summer in Malta.
A couple of months ago, I felt so eager to step out of the ordinary and challenge myself with something outside my comfort zone that I decided to take care of a group of teenagers on a study holiday in Malta.
I’m sitting on a bench in my usual spot, by the Harbourside, gazing at the boats that are bobbing on the waves, with the head in my hands for no particular reason. Suddenly, a caring voice drowns out Bristol’s ever-present seagull’s moan:
“Are you ok my lover?”
That was the exact moment when I began feeling nostalgic, knowing that soon no stranger in the street would have cared if I looked down, or wished me a nice day, or called me “my lover”.
Summer is over. It surely ended with good memories, but today is my last day in the UK, and I can’t help feeling a bit nostalgic already.
As I could see it coming, I decided to spoil myself with a stop-over in London: 24 hours somewhere in between my English summer and my new old life back in Rome.
In the name of location independence I first downshifted and then quit my desk job but, somehow, to this day I’m still in Rome. The emotional roller-coaster of being free to travel, of becoming enthusiastic about way too many projects, of meeting like-minded people on my way (falling in love, living in my own fantasy, falling off the unicorn, and reload), of being able to enjoy a walk in the sunshine while spring is blooming rather than dying in the cubicle…
It all began when I first put real life on pause to just live, elsewhere. I took a break from the intensity of life back home -stuffed with people you must see and places where you must go- and it felt great. Without strings, obligations, responbilities or duties, I found an elsewhere where I could just be.