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.
As you already know if you have been following my blog for a while, exactly one year ago I downshifted at my desk job to have more time for writing and focusing on this blog. It has been a very intense year and has brought me to the 1000 follower milestone on facebook, to publishing my travel stories in several magazines and even in a couple of books, to developing partnerships with different companies and –above all- to spending my time doing what I like most: travelling and writing.