I remember when I was little, summer was endless. In Italy, instead of having more regular breaks during the school year, we have longer summer holidays. So school ends around the 10th of June and starts again in September.

Three months of endless summer homework, but also three months of being able to do whatever you wanted to do.

For me, it was mainly horseback riding, summer camps and, when I was a little older, trips with friends. Those trips always turned out to be the ultimate friendship test - pure Big Brother energy, where twenty-four hours a day under one roof either made or completely broke the friendship.

However, August was usually the time for the family vacation. Around the 3rd or 4th of the month, my sister and I would pack these gigantic suitcases, which my dad would then have to transport to and from the car, and we would split between the two cars for the drive to the seaside. Usually, I would go with my dad and my sister would go with my mum.

My dad had this exaggerated hatred for traffic, so we would leave at around 5 in the morning.

Anyways, August would then be a whole month at the seaside with the fam, and at some point, my grandparents would join us as well.

Waking up around 9 or 10, doing a bit of summer homework until my dad came back from the daily shopping, then going to the beach around 12 and spending the day playing cards or volleyball with the friends you only met at the seaside, but who you had known since you were 5 years old.

And I thought this would never end.

To be honest, I never really realised that the last summer I got to spend all together - both with my full family and with my friends - was going to be the last summer where we didn’t have to plan months in advance whether we could all meet again, even if only for a weekend, because eventually we would all already have other plans.

But it is a privilege to be able to remember all of this. And to be able to cherish the weekends we do find time for now.

August was both the time I could not wait to have and the time I never wanted to end, because its end meant the beginning of school and, therefore, the beginning of a lot of stress and anxiety.

If you must know, I was one of those kids who lived for a good grade. Not for the learning itself, but because I loved being told what a good job I had done.

People pleasing 101.

And yes, I still love being told I do a great job.

People pleasing 201.

Anyways, August 2026 is almost ending, and I don’t really know how to feel about it.

September has always been a little bit like January. A fresh start.

And I am usually so excited about fresh starts and, let’s say, new beginnings.

But this year, I’m not sure I feel any differently from how I feel at the start of any other month.

To be honest, this year I hope every month can be a fresh start because, as I said in the latest episode of my podcast, I feel a bit like I’m in this limbo, this transitory period in which nothing really happens, and I just don’t know when it will end and I’ll stop feeling like this.

Lucky to wake up every day, yes, but still a bit numb.

A bit like...meh.

This month I haven’t been up to much that is new.

I keep writing on here.

I keep publishing my podcast, which I am very happy about.

And I keep going to my acting classes.

The highlight of my month actually was Thursday, the 27th of August, when I went to be a supporting artist for the first time and got to be on a movie set for the first time in my life.

And THAT was fun.

Everyone feels differently about being a supporting artist or an extra when you’re an actor, but honestly, as I have no previous experience, I’m glad to experience as much as I can.

Anyways, something I realised this month is that the passing of time feels different when you grow up.

It goes by so much quicker.

When did I realise this?

Thursday, the 27th of August.

It did end up being the highlight of my month, but it also started, as every time I have to be somewhere at a certain time for a reason, in the worst way possible.

I woke up at 6 and was ready to leave the house at 7. I had to be on set by 8:30, and I checked that it would only take me 50 minutes, so I could be early and meet the others.

Well, as much as you plan ahead, things do not always go as planned.

I walked out of the house to go to the tube station, and I honestly don’t know what has been going on with the Tube in London, but it’s honestly getting ridiculous.

As we all know, the tube isn’t cheap, and for the past few months, the service has been everything but good. There are always faults, problems with the trains ahead and multiple delays.

And this in a city like London, which depends on the underground, let’s say it is a BIG inconvenience.

I honestly have started planning to leave the house with at least half an hour of extra time in case the tube has issues.

And I did the same on Thursday.

I get to the tube, get on, and then the Odyssey starts.

After 10 minutes of being stuck on the tracks, the announcement:

“Fire brigade on tracks at South Kensington. We do not know how long it will take. We will keep you updated.”

In my head, I was like:

Story of my fucking life.

Every single time I have to be somewhere, something happens.

And I always think things happen for a reason and that you get the same issue over and over again until you learn your lesson, but honestly, I do not know what my lesson is this time.

Leaving early? When am I supposed to leave? Three hours before? Be there the night before? Like, come on.

And as if it wasn’t enough, I asked the lady working at the station how to get to Whitechapel and, without missing a beat, she simply told me to go get a coffee for an hour or so.

I did not have an hour or so.

So, despite being VERY short on money, I called an Uber. (Genius ideas and where to find them... do not ask me, for your sake).

It was 7:30 by that time and, for those of you who live in London - but honestly, in every city - 7:30am is rush hour.

And in London, going from west to east at rush hour takes the same amount of time as my flight from London to Turin.

About TWO HOURS.

I get in the Uber and it’s 7:45 by that time. I watched the ETA, and it said 8:30.

I got stressed, obviously, but I made sure I told the driver to find the fastest route with the least traffic. And he was super kind and told me not to worry.

Well, my friend. Not to worry?

He missed three turns and took the busiest route one could ever take.

I got delayed by 40 minutes.

Imagine if I had simply sat back and not said I was in a rush. Could have gotten there the day after.

First day ever on a set as an SA, and I am 40 fucking minutes late.

The girl I was in contact with was super kind and, in the end, me being late didn’t affect their schedule at all. We ended up starting an hour later, so there was nothing to worry about.

But in the meantime, I spent £70 and got to stress for about an hour and a half.

And this made me think.

I got to stress so much about something that I could not, in any possible way, control.

The traffic. The wrong turns. The tube.

Everything happened at the wrong time, but I could not have changed any of it.

And I thought to myself: however much I was worrying and praying for the clock to stop running during that hour and a half in the car, time would have passed anyways.

I could have simply accepted that I was late and done other things during that time instead of worrying. And I noticed that I do this all the time. I constantly worry about the passing of time. If I am on time or if I am late and most of the time I am late it is because of things that happen outside of my control and so why, why do I worry so much once I know I cannot change it?

Maybe this is my lesson.

I need to accept that time goes by, and I cannot do anything about it. I can worry. I can do whatever the hell I want. But time doesn’t stop, and it doesn’t go backwards.

I do believe that this is my lesson, and I honestly do not know when I’ll learn it.

Because it wasn’t this time. And I don’t believe it’s going to be any time soon.

But yeah, let’s start September with the idea that I can get better at accepting that time goes by and that I can’t control it.

So, if you want to do a little recap for yourself:

• What is one lesson you learnt this month, or one you will take with you into September?

See you in September 🍂🍁

Let’s keep the conversation going:

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❤️ i’d love to hear your thoughts - leave a like or a comment below and let me know how your month went!

Thank you, C x

A good job. A career to look forward to. A boyfriend. Maybe even saving up for a house.

Flash news… I have none of those right now.

And other flash news… it is scary, but it is also fine.

I think I’m going through what I would call a transitional period.

And I’ve been thinking about how we tend to overlook these periods because we’re so focused on the big events. The graduation. The new job. The relationship. The house. The wedding. Whatever it is that we’ve decided will eventually prove that we’ve “made it.”

But life isn’t only made up of those moments.

It’s also made up of everything that happens before them.

I like to think of it a little bit like a film.

The big events are the final movie that we go and watch at the cinema. They’re the polished version. The part everyone gets to see.

And then there’s everything happening behind the scenes.

The rehearsals. The mistakes. The waiting around. The scenes that get cut. The actors who don’t know exactly what they’re doing yet. The crew moving things around in the background.

Nobody watches the behind-the-scenes footage and thinks, “Wow, what a failure. Nothing is happening.”

In fact, when we get to see behind the scenes footage, that is actually a really good part of the movie. It’s funny to see the mistakes and everyone laughing.

So why can it not be the same in real life.

I know I have a career in front of me as a lawyer. But it isn’t going to happen overnight.

And I think this is what scares me.

The fact that I can see where I want to go, but I’m not there yet.

Actually, in other words, I do think I might be slightly scared of commitment. Lol.

Because choosing a direction feels like committing to a version of your future.

And what if you choose wrong? What if you spend years working towards something and then realise you don’t want it anymore?

What if everyone else seems to be moving forward while you’re still trying to work out what your next step is?

I think this becomes particularly difficult when you look around.

People in my close circle are reaching important milestones. They’re getting jobs, moving in with partners, buying houses, getting married, building the lives they imagined for themselves.

And I am genuinely happy for them.

But I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t sometimes a bittersweet feeling attached to watching it all happen.

Not because I feel sorry for myself. I don’t. I am lucky in a whole lot of ways, and I know that.

But I think I’m becoming increasingly aware of time. The passing of it.

At 26, thirty suddenly doesn’t feel that far away anymore. And I know, rationally, that 30 is not old. I know that people change careers at 30, 40, 50. I know that there is no universal timeline.

I know all of this.

The problem is that rationality has never exactly been my strongest characteristic.

So I worry. I worry about what comes next. Whether I’ll be where I want to be. Whether I’ll have made the right decisions. Whether I’ll wake up one day and realise I’ve spent too much time waiting for my life to begin.

And then I remind myself:

Time is going to pass anyway. Whether I spend the next four years worrying about turning 30, or whether I spend those four years actually living, learning, changing my mind, making mistakes and figuring things out…

I will still turn 30.

Hopefully. And then I’ll turn 40. And 50.

And hopefully I’ll look back and realise that the years I thought were “in between” were actually part of my life too.

Maybe this is what I need to learn right now. How to float a little. To embrace uncertainty instead of constantly trying to eliminate it.

To make clarity bit by bit, without expecting everything to make sense immediately.

And maybe I’ll even start enjoying those the behind-the-scenes years as well.

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Why did I do that? Why did I react like that? Why do I care about this so much? Why don’t I care about that? What do I actually want? Who am I?

And, perhaps most importantly, why am I asking myself questions I don’t necessarily have answers to? What’s the point?

Sometimes it genuinely feels like a waste of time. There are moments when I wish my brain would simply accept a situation and move on instead of opening an internal investigation into it. But, as annoying as it can be, I have to admit that without all those questions I probably wouldn’t know as much about myself as I do. I might not have all the answers, but the questions have made me pay attention.

And I think that is where I have started to notice something about myself that I had always taken for granted: I observe a lot. I notice things. I notice people’s reactions, their expressions, the way they speak, the things they don’t say, the little changes in their behaviour that other people might not necessarily pick up on. And because I’ve always done it, I never really thought of it as an ability. It was just something I did. In fact, I’ve always said that if I could have one superpower, I would want to be able to read people’s minds. And the older I get, the more I realise that maybe I was thinking about it too literally. Maybe you don’t need to actually hear someone’s thoughts to understand what is going on in their head. Maybe if you pay enough attention, if you observe enough, you can sometimes get surprisingly close.

So what if I do have a superpower?

Maybe I’ve just been so busy pointing out what I don’t have, what I am not, and what I wish I was, that I haven’t paid enough attention to what I already am. I think we are strangely good at doing this to ourselves. We are constantly looking at the qualities we wish we had, especially when we see them in other people, and somehow forget to look at the things that come naturally to us. We compare ourselves to someone who is more confident, more creative, more successful, more sociable, more articulate, more whatever, and then decide that because we don’t have what they have, we must be lacking something.

But what if we are simply looking at ourselves through the wrong lens? What if the things that come naturally to us are precisely the things we should be paying more attention to?

We tend to think of superpowers as something spectacular. Flying, teleportation, invisibility, reading minds. Something dramatic enough that everyone would immediately recognise it as a superpower. But what if our own superpowers were slightly more subtle? What if they were the things we don’t even think to call talents because they have always been part of us? The things we assume everyone else can do because we can. And what if, sometimes, they are even the things we get criticised for?

You’re too loud.

You overthink too much.

You’re too sensitive.

You’re too quiet.

You ask too many questions.

You care too much.

Of course, not every criticism is secretly a compliment. Sometimes we’re simply being annoying. I probably am, at least occasionally. But I do think there is something worth examining in the things people repeatedly tell us to tone down. Sometimes the quality that irritates someone else is simply a quality they don’t have, don’t understand, or don’t value in the same way we do. Being told you’re “too much” doesn’t necessarily mean you are too much. Sometimes it means you’ve met someone who needs less of whatever it is you naturally bring into a room.

And maybe that’s your superpower.

Perhaps a superpower doesn’t have to be something that makes you extraordinary in everyone else’s eyes. Perhaps it is something that makes you unmistakably yourself. Something that forms part of your signature. Something that, if you stripped it away, you would still technically be you, but you wouldn’t quite feel like yourself anymore. Maybe our superpowers are the qualities that make us recognisable to the people who know us best. The thing someone would say about you if I asked them, What is very, very Carlotta? Not necessarily something impressive. Just something that is unmistakably yours.

For me, I think noticing is one of those things. Reading the room. And for a long time, I didn’t think any of this was particularly remarkable because, to me, it was simply how you behaved. Of course you listen when someone is talking. Of course you notice when someone is uncomfortable. Of course you care. But perhaps that’s exactly why we overlook our own strengths. If something comes naturally to you, you don’t necessarily think of it as a strength. You think everyone can do it. You don’t congratulate yourself for breathing. You just breathe. And maybe some of our best qualities are like that. They are so familiar to us that we don’t even realise they are qualities at all.

I think I have done the same thing with creativity. When I was a child, painting and horses were two of my passions. I was the creative child. I drew, I painted, I rode, and I think I simply assumed that this would always be part of my life because it had always been part of my life. I assumed that if I was talented at something, I would always be talented at it. I didn’t really understand that talent needs looking after too. And then life got busy. School became university, university became work, and suddenly there were careers and applications and money and London and all the other things that somehow become more important when you grow up. I stopped painting as much. I stopped riding as much. I didn’t make a conscious decision to stop being creative; I just stopped making space for it.

Talent without practice isn’t enough, and I think that applies to more than painting or riding. We can take our natural qualities for granted in exactly the same way. We think, I’ve always been like this, so I’ll always be like this. I’ve always been curious, so I’ll always be curious. I’ve always been creative, so I’ll always be creative. But maybe these things need to be protected. Maybe the qualities that feel most natural to us still need our attention. Otherwise they can become quieter without us even noticing. And perhaps that is one of the saddest ways to lose your superpowers: not because you decided you didn’t want them anymore, but because you assumed they would always be there.

Maybe that is why I like thinking of these qualities as our signatures. Not necessarily the things that make us impressive, but the things that make us recognisable. The things that belong so closely to us that removing them would change something fundamental. If I suddenly became a planner, an analytical person, with zero creativity involved, I would still technically be the same person. But I wouldn’t feel like myself. If I stopped noticing people, stopped asking questions, stopped being curious about why people behave the way they do, I think something would be missing. Those things are part of my essence, whether I have consciously chosen them or not.

So I am trying to ask myself a slightly different set of questions now. Not only What am I missing? or What should I be?, but What is already here? What comes naturally to me? What do I notice that other people don’t? What do people feel when they are around me? What would disappear if I stopped doing the things that feel most like me? I don’t think these questions necessarily have easy answers either, but perhaps they are better questions.

And maybe this is the irony of all my overthinking. I spent so much time wondering whether asking myself endless questions was a waste of time, when perhaps the questions are actually part of the reason I notice so much in the first place.

So, what is your superpower?

I’m not asking what superpower you would choose if you could have any. I’m asking what you already have. The thing you do without thinking. The thing you assume everyone else can do. The quality that feels so ordinary to you that you don’t even recognise it as something special. Maybe you make people laugh without trying. Maybe people tell you things because they know you’ll listen. Maybe you can make anyone feel comfortable. Maybe you notice details other people miss. Maybe you create things. Maybe you understand people. Maybe you make sense of complicated things. Maybe you’re the person everyone calls when they don’t know what to do. Maybe you’re the person who always asks the extra question. Maybe you’re the person who cares a little more than everyone else thinks is necessary.

And maybe you’ve spent your whole life being told that you are too much of something.

Too loud. Too quiet. Too sensitive. Too curious. Too intense. Too kind. Too analytical. Too emotional. Too creative.

Maybe some of those things are worth questioning. But maybe some of them are worth keeping.

---

Let’s keep the conversation going:

❤️ I’d love to hear your thoughts — If this piece resonated with you, a like, comment, or share would mean a lot

Thank you, C.

I need a job in the legal industry so that I can complete my qualifying work experience required in order to qualify as a solicitor.

The options are either via a training contract or by working as a paralegal.

Different options, hard to get as they sound.

Now I want to talk about where I think the job market is going and why getting a job is becoming harder and harder despite being quite knowledgeable after two degrees and all sorts of different work experience.

I want to hear from recruiters, HR and employers as well as people like me that are in (desperate) need of securing a job to be finally called a solicitor.

Please help me out lol, and honestly I do want to hear your opinions and your journeys.

Thank you, C x

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“I can’t get into WhatsApp. I don’t understand. It worked yesterday.”

I open the app and it closes. Like there’s a glitch – and just like that, from one moment to the next, a part of your life is no longer accessible.

I tried everything. Deleted the app, reinstalled it, restarted the phone as if I had time to waste – as if I weren’t at the office, with a to-do list as long as the Thames. I turned it off and on. I searched Google to see if anyone else had the same problem, because in 2026 the first instinct isn’t to reason things out, but to seek collective confirmation for your own existential crisis.

And then, all of a sudden, like a bolt from the blue: shit, the update. It installed automatically last night.

Fine, I’ll put up an Instagram story – “If you’re looking for me, message me here because WhatsApp isn’t working.”

I book an appointment at the Apple Store.

My worst nightmare. Hell on earth, but with neon lights and employees in blue T-shirts. I don’t know why, but I always end up there on a Saturday. It’s a law of the universe, like Murphy’s but worse: whatever can go wrong with your iPhone will go wrong on the weekend.

I book without a second thought, because the phone has to work. There’s no messing around with these things. Imagine going without WhatsApp in 2026 – how would you even live? How sad, honestly. But times change and today, it is social media. In twenty years, we’ll probably be unable to live without something that doesn’t even exist yet, something that will make these years look romantically analog. Maybe AI, maybe a robot looking like someone you loved.

At nine o’clock sharp I’m in front of the Apple Store in Covent Garden.

Already anxious. I’m still paying off the phone in instalments – an investment that seems more and more questionable – but thankfully it’s still under warranty. Small victories.

The girl who greets me has one of those professional smiles that look sincere but last exactly as long as they need to. She asks me the standard questions: did you turn it off and on? Did you update it? Did you check the app itself?

And all I want to do is scream.

Not because the questions are stupid – but because they’re the exact same ones I asked myself less than twenty-four hours ago. If I’m here, it’s because they didn’t work. Let’s just say I was hoping for a magic touch, something beyond “Turn it off and on again.”

I answer her anyway.

“Yes, I did the update. I think that’s the problem. Maybe the app isn’t compatible with the new system version.”

She nods, her head tilted slightly, the way doctors do when you’re describing a vague symptom.

“If it’s an app problem, you need to contact the app’s developers directly. We don’t handle third-party apps.”

I look at her with the particular expression of someone who has just realised they’re completely clueless on the subject. Who the hell are WhatsApp’s developers? I think in my head.

She understands without me saying a word and adds, with an almost compassionate calm:

“META.”

I burst out laughing.

A short, instinctive laugh. Then a bitter one. Because of course, META. The great sovereign entity of social media. How do you even contact META? Do you send a carrier pigeon? Open a ticket that some algorithm will read in six weeks? Pray?

I pull myself together.

She – who at this point has probably seen everything, in her career at Apple – suggests a forced reset: erase everything, reinstall from scratch. Or create a new Apple ID.

I think to myself that I could have done this at home, but I hadn’t thought of it, or maybe I really was just hoping for a miracle. Anyway, in a sort of silent dialogue with my alter ego, I talk myself into it and agree.

And then comes the sentence delivered in the tone of someone who says it thirty times a day.

“You’ll lose all your messages if we do the reset. Do you accept the terms and conditions?”

WAIT, WHAT? What do you mean I’ll lose all my messages? Isn’t that literally what the backup is for?

My alter ego and I – decidedly not tech-savvy – start up a back-and-forth that drags on far too long, and I can tell from the poor girl’s face, waiting impatiently. She probably really thinks I’m not all there. But she doesn’t know that on that diabolical little device, I have something I can’t lose.

With the most forced smile I could find, I ask for ten minutes and step outside.

I sit down in the square in front of the Apple Store – the square I usually find irritating because it’s always full of tourists photographing everything, manufacturing memories – and hold the phone in my hands.

Why am I so scared to lose everything? Funny how I cannot stand people taking pictures and making memories and yet I cannot reset a phone because full of those memories.

On WhatsApp there’s the chat pinned at the top. Always the same one. Always there, before everything else. The first thing I looked in the morning for the past four years as a reminder.

The chat with my dad.

His last message: talk tonight.

And that night, we never spoke.

In that moment my mind does something very odd. I’m transported back into the apartment I was living in when I got the call my father died.

I remember it as if it were yesterday. I remember it in high definition.

My heart dropping into my stomach when I see Anna’s name on the screen.

Anna. The woman who used to clean my father’s house. But also a Red Cross volunteer – he’d told me that himself, when he gave me her number. “You never know,” he’d said, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. At 75, maybe it was. I hadn’t thought much of it at the time.

Anna’s voice on the other side of the phone was still, lower than I remembered and whispered, “Your father’s had an accident.”

It’s funny because that whole day I have had like a sixt sense. Something was off. But I couldn’t tell what it was. And my 22 years old brain didn’t really process the news live and I suddenly asked: “Is he okay?”

I already knew. I knew the moment I saw her name on the screen – because Anna had never had a reason to call me, and if she had one now, at 10:34 at night, it wasn’t to give me good news.

And yet, the question came out anyway. Like a reflex.

The longest silence of my life.

“No… I’m sorry. I was on volunteer duty. He died instantly.”

May 21, 2022.

Since that day I’ve never deleted our chat. I’ve kept it with the obsessive care reserved for things you know you can never buy back. I guarded it with a silent jealousy, and with the fear that if anyone saw it pinned there, they might pity me.

My greatest fear has never been death. Not in the classic sense – I’ve never woken up in the night terrified at the thought of no longer existing. Maybe because at twenty you’re a little bit immortal, at least in your head. Maybe because, as Epicurus said, when death is, we are not; when we are, death is not.

My greatest fear has always been forgetting.

Forgetting my father’s voice. His face. His expressions. Going back to the country house and no longer feeling anything.

Scientists say that every time we remember something, we’re remembering the last time we remembered it – not the original event. A memory is a copy of a copy of a copy, degrading a little each time. Like VHS tapes recorded over, or JPEGs compressed one too many times. And yet, memory is the only means we have of keeping alive the people, and the feelings we’re not ready to lose.

This has always frightened me. Because dying means ending. But being forgotten means never having truly existed.

If I had one power – just one, out of the whole catalogue of superpowers available – I’d want infinite memory. To remember everything. Every word ever said, every thought not spoken, every laugh shared.

I rub my fingers on my phone. Why didn’t I take screenshots of those chats. I should have known better. A tear comes down my face. I have not managed thinking about my dad without crying. Who knows maybe one day I will.

Since he died, I’ve written to him often on that chat.

Messages that will never arrive. Or maybe they will – depends on what you believe. On that front I stay in a grey zone: dogmatism gives me hives, and nihilism bores me.

I wrote to him when I didn’t know whether to accept the office job in January 2025. I wrote to him on Valentine’s Day, because he used to wish us happy Valentine’s and give us Baci Perugina chocolates. I wrote to him when I went grocery shopping, because for years that was the hour I used to call him. My grocery runs took an hour not because I bought half the supermarket, but because I’d lose myself wandering the aisles while we talked on the phone.

I wrote to him when I needed his advice – even knowing he’d probably end up annoying me with it.

He completely lacked any filter between thought and word. He said what he thought, always, with a bluntness that could seem like rudeness but was, in fact, a form of respect: he considered you adult enough to handle the truth.

He was also the one who invented, at least in my family, the tradition of real-time airport messages. Updates on every step, as if, after four years in London, we still didn’t know how to take a flight.

And so, I’d send the message “leaving now” and he’d reply, “already here waiting for you.”

As if I could make the plane fly faster. As if I could convince Ryanair to be on time, just once, in the history of civil aviation. And when I’d finally come out – after passport control and baggage claim – he’d be there. That look of someone who’s been waiting forever and has no intention of letting you forget it, but only because he couldn’t wait to see you.

It’s been over ten years since I’ve had a routine with my father.

Turin, then London. He was always in Pralormo – a village in the province of Asti, deep Piedmont, where everyone knows everyone, and no one really minds their own business. The kind of place you love and hate in equal measure, that makes you want to run away at twenty and feel homesick for at thirty.

Living far away, in an almost cruel way, spares you from some things.

It spares you from the sudden silence of an empty chair at the table. From one plate too few. I never had to remove that fourth plate.

But the airport, no.

Every time I land in Turin, the arrivals doors open, and I watch them. Sometimes I stop for a second before walking out, as if I could prepare myself. But it doesn’t work. The doors open and he’s not there. And every time it’s a small, absurd shock – like a step in the dark that wasn’t where you thought it would be.

Without realizing it, I open my phone’s photo gallery.

I scroll.

Looking for traces. Screenshots of conversations, something.

I find no saved chats. But I find a video.

April 2020. Full lockdown.

The day before lockdown hit London, I’d bought a flight and gone straight to Pralormo. Try telling a twenty-one-year-old living in London, who only saw her flat to sleep in, that she’d have to stay locked up for an indefinite amount of time.

So, I got on the first flight to Turin and took refuge in the countryside. And that decision became one of the greatest gifts of my life.

For me, lockdown is a happy memory.

I know you’re not supposed to say that. I know the world stopped, that people lost loved ones. And I too, afterward, lost myself. But in that moment, I’d become a child again. I was happy.

It had been years since I’d lived day-to-day life with my father.

Breakfast together. The dogs coming into the kitchen in the morning with that energy only dogs have at that hour. Watching TV in bed at seven in the evening because he ate with the chickens, or picking films he didn’t like but that secretly, quietly, moved him to tears. Answering the question “how much pasta do you want?” with “a normal amount” – and watching his desperate look as he tried to work out what “normal” could possibly mean. And him making too much pasta anyway.

And the laughing. Only now do I realise how much I miss laughing like that. I haven’t laughed that way since May 21, 2022.

In the video we’re playing chess.

Chess was one of his fixations. He taught me as a kid, and over the years I’d built up a fairly solid repertoire of moves – not brilliant, but functional. I had an opening move that in three turns would put my opponent in a tough spot. A move he taught me.

In the video, I make it. He notices too late. Checkmate in three moves – me laughing like a maniac, him throwing his hands up to the sky in a gesture of total mock despair, as if he’d just suffered the greatest injustice in the history of world chess.

“No one can play with you.”

Said by the very man who taught me the move. I’m starting to think he let me win.

I keep scrolling through the gallery.

Horses. The garden in summer. A photo of him walking in the mountains with his classic pensive look. I always thought part of him was deeply unhappy. You could see it, and even though he’d tell my sister and me that we’d given him a second chance at life, I could feel it. He was missing something, and that photo pierced right through me. I hope he knew how much I loved him despite everything. Despite the silences, the arguments of the last few years, not a day goes by that I don’t think of him.

It’s not just nostalgia. It’s memory.

I’ve thought about everything he taught me.

Horseback riding – the position, the balance, the respect for the animal. You don’t command a horse, you ask it, and it decides whether to trust you enough to go along. It’s a lesson that applies outside the saddle too, but he never explained it. He showed it.

Swimming. Those silly races to grab sand from the bottom, near the red buoy. Too bad I once forgot that air is for going down, but especially for coming back up.

Touching jellyfish, because the top of the bell doesn’t sting and, apparently, even jellyfish need some affection.

Skiing – with those fluorescent yellow trousers that used to mortify me as a kid. The same trousers he wore when he came fiftieth in the World Cup. And yet, if I can say today that I truly know how to come down a mountain, it’s thanks to him.

And then the things that aren’t taught but are passed down.

Sarcasm – that kind of affectionate irony that can look like distance but is actually closeness. Humour as a love language. Never taking yourself too seriously, something I’ve always struggled enormously with.

And punctuality. That one, despite all his efforts, never stuck.

But if memories are copies of copies, inevitably coloured by the mood of the moment they’re recalled, and therefore less faithful than we like to believe, then losing a digital backup shouldn’t really change all that much, should it?

And yet it does.

Because there’s a difference between knowing your memories are imperfect and losing the objects that anchor them to reality. Messages, photographs, videos aren’t the memories themselves. They’re their handholds. They’re the things that help you rebuild a story, each time a little more faithfully.

Marcel Proust dedicated seven volumes to involuntary memory. To the idea that certain memories lie dormant inside us until something, a smell, a taste, a sound, suddenly wakes them, as if no time had passed at all.

The famous madeleine.

For me, the saved WhatsApp chat was my madeleine.

That’s why I keep everything.

Not to live in the past – something people tell me every now and then, with that slightly condescending concern people reserve for those they think are grieving badly. Not because I don’t want to move forward. But because memories are the way the past keeps existing in the present.

I think death frightens us not because we’ll end, but because we’ll never know if we were enough. If we left something behind. If someone, somewhere, will hold onto the fact that we existed.

My father existed.

I know because I remember him. I know because every time I lose a chess game I think of that move, his move, and I feel him right there beside me.

Why do I hold on to memories so much? Why was my father so terrified of being forgotten?

And why do I find myself thinking about all this on a Saturday morning, just because WhatsApp stopped working?

I go back into that hell they call the Apple Store.

The girl looks at me, waiting.

I smile at her.

“Yes,” I say. “I accept the terms and conditions.”

My father is exactly where he’s always asked to be.

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Thank you, C x

The UK offers the incredible opportunity to study whatever you’d like for your BA and then do the so-called conversion degree for a year and a half, study all the basics of law, complete two years of qualifying work experience and then — unfortunately — do two (devil) exams.

Cry lots of tears.

And then finally be able to call yourself a solicitor.

Is it worth it? I’ll tell you once I am qualified.

It is a commitment.

The studying is no joke. And I’m not even talking about the university coursework — I’m talking about the two very large state exams which you have to pass.

But I believe everything worth something requires a bit of work and a bit of patience. Sometimes a lot of tears. Sometimes wondering whether it is actually the right path. And then, hopefully, finally getting there and seeing where this new title will take you.

Where am I at? I’d say halfway through.

I need to sit the second exam and finish seven months of qualifying work experience.

The hard part, for me, is first of all not having a job in London — which I highly do not recommend if you still want to eat. Studying and working isn’t ideal if you’re working full-time either. Recipe for disaster. Scouts’ word. And then, once you finish working to focus on studying, you have to find a job again. Which is, as I’ve discovered, not the easiest thing.

But hey, people do it every day. The world is full of solicitors. So why not me?

Something I’ve learned so far is that everyone works differently.

In my previous firm, I witnessed completely different ways people work, different ways people learn, and when it was my turn to teach something, I had to make sure that the way I was teaching was actually the way the interns were learning.

And I think that is something you only really understand once you’re in a working environment.

Something I have thought about over and over again is: will it ever be wasted time if I don’t become a solicitor?

Truth is, I can read a contract and I know what to look out for and I think this type of knowledge will serve me with or without being called a solicitor.

Maybe that’s also something we forget when we become so focused on getting to the end of something.

We think that if we don’t eventually become whatever we set out to become, then all the time we spent getting there was wasted.

But maybe it isn’t.

Maybe you take something from every path you go down, even if you eventually decide to take another one.

If you are thinking about studying law, let me know your thoughts.

And if you’re studying in a different country, I’d love to know how the process works where you are, because I find it fascinating how differently the same profession can be approached depending on where you are in the world.

And once I qualify in the UK, I actually want to qualify in the US as well.

I’d love to bring together the different legal systems and see what I can do with that knowledge.

This month has been full of surprises.

I am not talking about anything loud, to be honest. If anything, this has probably been the month I have been the quietest I have ever been.

No socials, no announcing what I am doing, no telling everyone my plans.

Because the truth is, I am trying to figure it out, and I think I need to do it quietly.

Anyways, back to the point.

Last week, I wrote an article called Dare to Fail, about how scared I had become of failing that I had basically stopped trying things altogether.

So, I thought I should probably practise what I preach.

Because the truth is: I was tired of hearing myself saying I’m gonna be better tomorrow or I’m gonna start that thing tomorrow.

Tomorrow is very convenient, isn’t it? But tomorrow might be very different from today who knows?

So I decided I have to be more disciplined. I have to hold myself accountable. And what better way than a nice little recap at the end of each month?

At the beginning of July I was confused, and honestly quite restless.

I had so many ideas in my mind, but I would find a million and one excuses before I even got started.

And then, one day, I just woke up and took the first step.

Without thinking too much about it.

I started the acting course I auditioned for at the end of June and, I’ll admit, it is one thing that makes my week.

I have my first script to learn for next week, so we will see how that goes.

I might be terrible. I might forget all my lines.

But I committed to something.

And that, for me, is a big deal.

I am allowing myself to be bad at something before I can become good at it.

Which sounds very simple, but apparently I needed 26 years to understand it.

I decided not to take my law exam. The infamous SQE. I wasn’t ready and I made up my mind.

I know a lot of my friends and family wouldn’t agree with me, and this is partly why I didn’t say anything.

Again, I needed to do this on my own.

Maybe it is the right decision, maybe it isn’t. I don’t know.

But for once I didn’t want to make a decision based on what everyone else thought I should be doing.

And that felt quite freeing.

I started writing on substack. This one is a big one.

I’ve always wanted to have a blog. When I was younger I wanted to be a little Carrie Bradshaw. Who hasn’t? (don’t lie).

I also started my very own podcast: Coffee with Charlie. Again, something I had been thinking about for a very long time.

And this is probably the biggest thing I’ve realised this month.

If you TAKE THE FIRST STEP, something happens.

You get this little adrenaline rush of: Oh. Maybe I can actually do this.

And then you do it again. And then something else. And it becomes a compound effect.

One small thing makes the next thing feel a little LESS SCARY.

I think I have spent so much time waiting to feel ready that I forgot that maybe you just have to start before you feel ready.

And honestly?

I’m proud of this month.

I have also started a little side hustle. I am now a pet sitter here in London.

I am currently applying for jobs, and I thought that in the meantime I could still try something that works around my schedule.

And again, it is something I’ve been wanting to do for some time now.

Here in London I can’t keep pets because of my landlord’s rules, and having been raised in the countryside around dogs, cats and horses, I miss them.

So I figured, why not this summer when I’m not going anywhere?

My friends keep asking me why I’m not going on holiday or going back home to Italy.

Well, firstly, I don’t have the money. And I don’t want to waste the little savings I have left.

And even if I did go, I know I wouldn’t really enjoy it because I would be worrying about the money the whole time.

Secondly, I just don’t feel like going on holiday.

Which actually reminded me of something my mum once told me.

She told me how she met my dad.

It was summer and she was in Turin while everyone else was on holiday in August. And she felt so disconnected from the rest of the world that she decided to stay in Turin — which is HOT in August, let me tell you — and she started taking horse riding lessons again.

And that’s how she met my dad.

I guess I am my parents’ daughter because I feel a little bit like my mum did then.

Disconnected from the noise.

Everyone seems to be doing something, going somewhere, living their best summer, and I am here in London, working, writing, pet sitting, going to acting classes and trying to figure out what the hell I am doing.

But maybe that’s okay. Maybe I don’t need to be somewhere else. Maybe this little break from the world is exactly what I need.

And I have a feeling that something good will come out of it.

So July, here we are.

I didn’t figure everything out. But I started.

And maybe that is enough for now.

So if you want to do a little recap yourself, here are my questions:

• How did you feel at the beginning of the month?

• What did you do? It can be anything. Seriously.

• How do you feel at the end of the month?

• What do you want to take with you into next month?

• What do you want to leave behind?

• What do you want to get better at?

I think I am going to keep doing this.

See you in August

Let’s keep the conversation going:

❤️ I’d love to hear your thoughts - leave a like, or a comment below!

Thank you, C

Can I just say… July has been THE month.

I’ve done more new things, taken more leaps of faith, and stepped outside my comfort zone more than I have in the past three years.

For so long I’ve wanted to start a podcast. I kept thinking about it, planning it, imagining it… but never actually doing it.

Until now.

Subscribe now

I finally pressed record.

This podcast is a companion to my articles, but it’s a little more personal and practical. It’s about my real life here in London and my journey towards becoming a solicitor (or wannabe solicitor 😅).

I’ll be sharing my weekly wins, losses, lessons and thoughts along the way - and I would genuinely love to hear about YOUR journeys too. Who knows, maybe one day we’ll even meet for a coffee ☕️

This first episode is simply an introduction to who I am… which, honestly, is a little messy. But that’s kind of the point.

So grab a coffee and join me for this new chapter.

I hope you enjoy it - and I really hope you’ll share your own journey with me too.

xx

Share I Was Thinking

Actually when was the last time you avoided making a mistake?

I did today, and the day before, and probably since my memory can go back.

But when did failure become such a terrible thing?

Somewhere along the way, "You failed" stopped meaning you TRIED something difficult and started meaning there is something wrong with you. We began treating failure as a verdict on character rather than a stage of LEARNING.

I know because, for years, I believed exactly that.

Growing up, I became obsessed with perfection. More specifically, I became obsessed with being more like my sister. She seemed good at everything she did, or at least that's how I saw it. I was good at different things, but they weren't the things people noticed. They weren't the things that came with praise, achievement, or obvious success.

So I abandoned them.

Instead, I chased the things she was good at, even though they didn't come naturally to me. Looking back, I wonder why I never interpreted our differences as something beautiful. They were evidence that we were different people. Instead, I took them as evidence that I wasn't enough.

That was my first real encounter with failure.

Soon, I wasn't simply failing at certain things. I became someone who failed. I started measuring my worth by how often I came up short.

How could people like me if I kept failing?

By the age of twenty-six and with many, many failures behind me, I realised something unsettling. I hadn't just become afraid of failing.

I had stopped allowing myself to fail altogether.

Because failing was bad.

And if failing was bad, then trying became dangerous.

I can see it now in the way I show up in life. I haven't started many new things in years. Even the hobbies that once lit me up as a child have remained untouched. Not because I don't love them, but because I won't immediately be as good as I'd like to be.

So I don't begin.

What a strange bargain.

To avoid the possibility of failure, I guarantee myself the certainty of standing still.

Kierkegaard wrote that "to dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself." For a long time, I thought I was protecting myself by avoiding failure. In reality, I was slowly shrinking my own life.

I've started wondering whether we've misunderstood failure altogether.

Failure simply means reality disagreed with our expectations. That's all.

It means we discovered something we didn't know before.

It means we MOVED.

The only people who never fail are those who never place themselves in a position where failure is possible. That may spare them embarrassment, but it also spares them growth.

There is something almost absurd about believing that doing nothing is preferable to trying and failing.

If you don't try, you won't fail.

But you'll also stay exactly where you are.

Failure doesn't guarantee success.

But refusing to fail almost guarantees you'll never find it.

So here's to failure.

Here's to awkward beginnings, terrible first attempts, rejection emails, forgotten lines, unfinished paintings, wrong turns, and everything that reminds us we're still learning.

So let's stop treating failure as though it were one of the seven deadly sins, and start treating it for what it really is: NECESSARY.

Let’s keep the conversation going:

❤️ I’d love to hear your thoughts - leave a like, or a comment below!

Thank you, C

What if that ache you carried, that quiet longing you could never quite name, was not a sign that something was missing, but a reminder that something within you was still reaching?

What if every question that threatened to drown you was one that no one has ever truly answered?

What if doubt was never your enemy, but the gentle pull of something deeper calling you to explore?

What if not knowing was never a failure, but the beginning of a lifelong yearning - a doorway into wonder, mystery, and possibility?

What if uncertainty was never meant to leave you lost, but to awaken the part of you that longs to discover, to feel, to become?

To remind you that you are real in a world where imagination is slowly giving way to imitation, where replication is mistaken for intelligence, where something can be created to calculate, predict, and repeat - but not to ache for something it cannot name, not to dream of places it has never been, not to stand before the ocean and feel a pull toward something beyond understanding.

What if the proof that you are real is not that you have all the answers, but that you still carry questions that stir your soul?

What if the years you spent searching for yourself, wondering where you belonged, and reaching for a version of yourself you could almost see but never fully touch, were never wasted?

What if every moment of uncertainty was quietly shaping you into the person you were always becoming?

What if who you are today is not the final destination, but a beautiful passage toward who you are still going to become?

What if, like the wind changing direction, you are allowed to change too?

What if the thousand ideas that visit your mind are like swallows returning each spring - arriving from unseen places, filling the sky with impossible beauty for a moment before travelling beyond your sight?

What if they are not lost when they leave?

What if they are simply finding their way back home, waiting for the season when your heart is ready to receive them again?

What if every title you have given yourself was never who you truly were, but only a temporary name placed around something far greater?

What if no achievement, no role, no label could ever contain the depth of a human soul?

What if the only truth that has ever remained is this:

You are here.

You are breathing.

You are alive.

You are real.

And perhaps your greatest intelligence was never in how quickly you could find answers, but in your ability to wonder, to imagine what does not yet exist, and to create something from nothing but a quiet longing inside you.

What if the most extraordinary thing about being human is that we can miss places we have never been, dream of things we have never seen, and yearn for futures that do not yet exist?

What if that is not emptiness, but a compass?

What if it is the part of you that knows there is still more to discover, more to create, more to love, more to become?

What if the greatest act of courage is to remain a child at heart - to stay endlessly curious, endlessly creative, endlessly willing to believe that there is always another horizon waiting for you?

Maybe the answers were never the destination.

Maybe the questions were always the invitation.

Maybe every unanswered question, every restless night, every moment you felt lost, was simply life gently guiding you back to yourself.

And what an extraordinary world it is to live in - a world where your mind can wander beyond the limits of what exists, where imagination can still run free, and where a single human heart can look at the ocean, feel something it cannot explain, and whisper:

What if

Let’s keep the conversation going:
❤️ I’d love to hear your thoughts — If this piece resonated with you, a like, comment, or share would mean a lot

Come say hello over on Instagram

Thank you, C.

I’m a sunset lover. I’ve witnessed countless breathtaking skies, but this landscape felt like an out-of-body experience. It was also a dream seven years in the making. After living in London for seven years, I finally made it here.

The Seven Sisters Cliffs.

It’s a palette of colours that Londoners—and perhaps most of us—rarely get to see.

Some say, "It’s just a walk."

It’s so much more than that.

It’s a chance to witness millions of years of the Earth’s story etched into white chalk cliffs that stand in silence, yet somehow speak volumes.

Whether you go alone, with friends, or with family, the experience is different every time. But simply standing there, watching nature’s masterpiece unfold before you, is unlike anything else.

I’ve always believed walking is a form of meditation, even when it isn’t silent. The rhythm of your steps, the sound of the waves, and the vastness of the sea have a way of softening worries and quieting anxieties without asking anything in return.

Ironically, the thing that surprised me most was the sound of silence.

Despite the presence of other people, it felt peaceful. The only sound that truly reached me was the waves breaking against the cliffs. For a Londoner, maybe that was the real out-of-body experience.

You walk up and down the hills, hoping not to slip. You stop every few minutes because every angle somehow looks even more beautiful than the last. And if you're anything like me, you roll down one of the hills because your inner child simply has to.

This place makes you dream. It makes you think. It makes you observe.

The sea has always been a healer for me. There’s something about looking towards the horizon, into the unknown, that puts everything into perspective.

Heraclitus once said, "No man ever steps into the same river twice." That idea is exactly why the sea fills me with wonder. The water before you is never the same. Every wave is different. Every tide is new. And yet the ocean remains—endless, ever-changing, yet somehow constant. It quietly reminds us that change is the only thing that never stops.

If I had to become anything, I think I’d choose the ocean.

Infinite. Ever-reaching. Always moving.

Creating landscapes that leave people speechless, simply by existing.

(Just so you know bring sunscreen cos tan lines are real, yeah I thought I was immune).

Let’s keep the conversation going:

❤️ I’d love to hear your thoughts — If this piece resonated with you, a like, comment, or share would mean a lot

📸 Come say hello over on Instagram @totta_fn

Thank you, C.

Yes. I auditioned. I got in.

It’s part-time, because London is expensive and unfortunately “future Hollywood celebrity” is not yet a paid role. So I will still be working, unless I decide to do self-tapes from under a bridge with terrible lighting and worse life choices.

How hard was it to get in? I honestly don’t know. Maybe loads of people applied, maybe no one showed up and I accidentally won by default. No idea. And I don’t care.

What matters is I auditioned—and for the first time in years, I genuinely believed I could do it.

Even briefly.

Which is either character development or delusion. I’m not picky.

A month ago I had what can only be described as an identity crisis. Nothing dramatic, just the usual “what am I doing with my life” situation that arrives uninvited and refuses to leave.

Everyone says your twenties are both exciting and terrifying, and at 26 I can confirm: yes. That’s accurate. Unfortunately, I still don’t have a more sophisticated description than that.

It feels like standing at a crossroads all the time. Except every direction looks like it leads to a completely different life, and none of them come with a return ticket.

Now, don’t get me wrong—I am lucky.

I have a mother I owe basically my entire presence in London to. And she proves, daily, that the only real limit is yourself. She is relentless in the best possible way, doing her thing with absolutely no concern for whatever nonsense anyone else thinks.

And I have my sister—my twin. A force of nature. Honestly, she feels like she came from another planet. When I grow up, I want to be like her. Or at least a low-budget version of her.

I also had the incredible opportunity to study. At home, in London and probably somewhere else in the future. That matters.

None of this means life has been easy. Everyone collects their fair share of disasters along the way.

I just… managed mine by working three jobs while studying, essentially scheduling myself into survival mode so I wouldn’t have time to spiral into existential dread. Very efficient. Not particularly peaceful.

But it worked.

It proved I can do hard things. Which is useful, because I am extremely good at believing I can’t.

So I kept going until I had enough evidence to stop arguing with myself.

And now, the first time I wanted to do something for no particular use, I didn’t debate it endlessly. I just moved the first step.

Bit of a background. I need to qualify as a solicitor and I need to do my last two exams. To do so I left my job in May to study for final exams. At first, it was fine—just studying, normal life, functioning human behaviour.

Then one night, on the balcony of my childhood home by the sea, I started crying and couldn’t stop. Like something had broken open and forgotten how to close.

I felt drained. Completely emptied out.

And for the first time, I thought: something is missing.

So I started asking who I am.

And the honest answer was: I don’t know.

Over the years, I feel like I’ve left pieces of myself everywhere. Like shedding skin, except the skin doesn’t grow back in the same shape.

I tried to put it together again, but the puzzle doesn’t fit. Some pieces are missing, some are from different boxes entirely, and none of it looks like me anymore.

The things that used to make me forget the world—drawing, painting, horse riding, creating plays—are just gone.

I used to be wildly, unreasonably creative. Then at some point I decided those things were “just hobbies.” Not useful. Not serious. Not worth it.

And I let them go.

So now, at 26, I’m trying to figure out who I am without them.

Which brings me here.

I want to get to know myself again. And the only place I know to start is through creating.

Why acting?

Because acting, for me, is basically supervised emotional chaos. It forces you to explore yourself instead of ignoring the internal noise and pretending everything is fine. Which feels… necessary.

So I auditioned. And I got in. And I’m starting next week.

Why am I writing about this here and not sharing it people I know?

Because I haven’t told them yet.

I’m scared of what they might think. And I have a terrible habit of letting other people’s opinions ruin things for me before I’ve even had a chance to properly start.

What if they think it’s stupid? What if I start doubting it? What if I talk myself out of something I actually want?

So for now, I’m keeping it mine. I’ll tell them eventually.

Also, I should mention: the identity crisis did happen during a sunstroke, while I had a 40-degree fever, so technically I may have been hallucinating parts of this.

And I did chop half my hair off after 20 years of having long hair.

So yes. This is a significant life phase.

I'm hopelessly romantic. I just pretend I'm not.

I've been ghosted more times than I can count. In fact, every time except once.

I like one-night stands. The only things I ask for are respect, kindness, and maybe a few cuddles.

I show affection by attaching myself to people. My parents used to call me Super Glue.

I'm addicted to scrolling Vinted for absolutely no reason.

I need to clear my space, but I never know where to start, so I usually don't start at all.

I still text my dad's phone number sometimes. He died four years ago. I don't know who's getting the messages now.

I'm not scared of dying. I'm scared of forgetting, and of being forgotten.

I'm obsessed with details.

I need other people to tell me I've done a good job. My own approval never seems enough.

When I'm home alone, I act out imaginary scenes and conversations. I've been doing it since I was five or six years old. It might explain why I want to study acting.

I hug trees.

I can't sleep alone in a house. The lights stay on. So much for independence.

I hate changing my bedsheets. Mostly because my bed is the bottom one of a bunk bed and impossible to reach properly.

I love putting washing on. I hate taking it out.

Sometimes I eat standing over the sink because I can't be bothered to sit down.

I love coffee. I suspect coffee loves me a little too much.

I love painting, but I haven't painted in over two years. I'm planning to take classes and learn oils. More than anything, I want to learn how to paint waves. It's become a bit of an obsession.

I haven't been horse riding since my dad died.

Part of me wants to fix my nose. When I was seven, I ran into a stone pillar and it's been crooked ever since. Most people probably don't notice. I do.

I believe in manifestation.

I want to do something important with my life. I want to matter.

My comfort series is Heartland. I rewatch it every few months like clockwork.

I've failed my driving test twice and still don't have my licence. Soon I'll have to retake the theory test too.

I still don't have a credit card.

I keep buying makeup I never wear, even though I'd love to be the kind of person who actually uses it.

I love getting my nails done. I hate removing the gel, so I usually wait until I can peel it off.

I can be incredibly focused and incredibly distracted at exactly the same time.

I want to learn salsa dancing, but I never know who to go with, so I still haven't signed up.

I secretly want to write a song and get back into playing the piano but honestly I think I would need to start again from scratch.

My bag is full of things that might be useful one day because you never know.

I hate digging through that same bag looking for my keys.

When I wear sunglasses, I feel like a supermodel.

My "s" sounds a bit like an "f" sometimes, and I still don't know how to fix it.

If I could choose one superpower it would be not to sweat.

I am trying to put on a good playlist on Spotify but my music taste keep changing so I only have one playlist with all the songs I like.

I wish I went to art school.

I have not yet fallen in love.

I like taking walks in the cemetery.

So you stayed

A lawyer a waitress a tutor an intern a student an artist a horseback rider a runner a swimmer a tennis player a writer a reader a learner an actor perhaps a football player a human

a Woman and a Child

A gathering of contradictions

All versions yet to be created

A mind running around while living staying still

Fearing choosing one would mean losing all

Lost in the days of being a good girl

Chasing approval from a crowd

That was never keeping score

Woke up to a life not lived

To choices not made

To tomorrow becoming today

Worrying about not being just one

Fell asleep not being at all

And I sometimes wonder if we might even be the most misunderstood species on Earth.

Because animals communicate in much simpler ways. Their signals are direct, instinctive, and tied to immediate need — danger, safety, hunger, territory.

It’s striking to me that I can speak the same language as my friends and family, and even learn different languages to reach more people, and yet, while they may understand the literal meaning of what I say, they rarely fully grasp the meaning or sentiment behind it.

I call myself an empath, but honestly, I don’t think I am above any of that.

You say something, and it will be interpreted by the other person. That interpretation will undoubtedly be shaped by their thoughts, beliefs, judgments, and their current situation in life. They will assign your words the importance they believe they deserve.

This is not to generalise — obviously it doesn’t happen all the time. We do find people who eventually understand exactly what we mean, sometimes even without needing to explain ourselves. That’s how I know someone truly “gets” me — when I don’t have to over-explain. But even then, what they receive is still an interpretation. It is never exactly what lived in my head when I said it.

We speak the same language, and yet everything we say is constantly translated into something slightly different depending on who is listening. It feels like a constant game of Chinese whispers.

When I was 16, I felt like no one was getting me. I thought I was the world’s most misunderstood teenager. In reality, I was just expressing something I still feel now — I simply didn’t know how to say it properly. And the truth is, half of what we say is always lost in translation. At 16, we already say so little, so if even that gets misinterpreted, it can feel like it becomes impossible to be understood at all.

And so we argue, we cry, we scream — thinking that somehow people will hear exactly what we mean, without layers of interpretation. Without realising that this invisible filter between what we say and what is received is not really in anyone’s control.

I believe it’s biological. I think we are built this way.

To be honest, I think there are people who try harder than others to step into someone else’s shoes — to decode not just the words, but the intention, the feeling, the state behind them.

But there are also many who don’t. Sometimes because they don’t want to make the effort. Sometimes because they don’t know how.

And speaking to those people can be incredibly frustrating — or at least it is for me.

To hear someone say they “know you” while only grasping maybe one or two percent of what you’re trying to express is exhausting. And it’s not about intelligence, or being shallow, or selfish.

It’s just that there is a wall between people, with only small cracks that allow fragments of meaning to pass through.

And sometimes I think I am stupid, because all I really want is to be understood — but I don’t really know how to explain myself. So I end up over-explaining, until I lose the original shape of what I wanted to say, because now I am just trying to be seen.

That is why I tend not to share the things that trouble me — my insecurities, my thoughts.

I am not a poet, philosopher, or psychologist — all of whom have a better ability to use words and thoughts than I do. So for me, trying to explain something I can barely explain to myself, something I don’t even fully understand yet, feels like a recipe for disaster.

So I suppose I write instead — not to make things clearer for others, but to make them slightly less tangled for myself.