The discovery made me very happy, of course. But it was nothing like I had anticipated that day to be. I had no excessive reaction. Fireworks didn’t appear around me in my tiny NYC bathroom. I didn’t burst out crying—or laughing. Surprisingly, I just kind of acknowledged the situation in a very rational way though I had no idea how it would all unfold.

At the fourth month mark, I decided I was going to write a series of essays dedicated to motherhood. I did start, but I never finished. Pregnancy took over. In hindsight, I was naive to think I could write about motherhood when my child was then still just a little dinosaur looking creature. And now that I am an actual mother, I realize there is no timeframe for when I should be finishing this collection as I will be a mother until the end of my days.

In honor of my first Mother’s Day (tomorrow), I decided to publish the very first essay I wrote on August 25th 2025. Maybe this will encourage me to pick up where I left off and continue transferring all of the ideas, thoughts, lessons and wishes I have for my life as a mother onto paper. After all, there’s no finish line for the job of motherhood. Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers out there.

THE PRELUDE

Motherhood. What a tender condition. Possibly the ultimate female experience. It is something that many yearn for, some cringe at and others look at indifferently. For me, motherhood has always been simply a plus in my existence as a woman. It was always a mirage in the far distance, something to get to one day, maybe, but not necessarily. My memoir would never start with “Ever since I was a little girl, I dreamed of getting married and becoming a mother.” That would be a lie, a lie with capital L. Because—although I was never disgusted by the idea of having to, one day, share my personal real estate with another being—my dreams growing up laid in traveling the world and succeeding in whatever field I applied myself to. Of course I have always respected mothers; all kinds of them. Mothers who fell into it by accident. Mothers who tried hard to conceive to no avail and had to resort to other mediums in order to gain the title. Mothers who found themselves having to wear those shoes. Single mothers. Partnered mothers. Stay at home mothers. My own mother.

Speaking of my mother, she is someone I have always looked up to. Not for her achievements in the workforce, but for her magic ability to keep it together no matter the circumstance. My mother, a beautiful Italian woman, traded in her life for us; me and my sister, that is. She, too, had ambitions and aspirations but, at some point, making sure her children were well taken care of became her priority. Maybe it was an essential deliberation, given the nature of her marital life, constantly relocating and with no clear path beaten for her ahead. No nanny or grandparent would be able to rear her daughters better than she could. I have always admired her with the same awe reserved for religious figures. A charming halo has always surrounded her, with her impeccable style, coiffed hair and light-yet-alluring make up. She cooked two meals a day from scratch and provided us with fresh snacks, none of those pre-packaged chemical sweets my school mates had access to. The only “merenda” we were allowed consisted of fresh bread from the baker and fragrant cold cuts from the butcher, rigorously bought on the same day. Given that I grew up in the ‘90s and my mom smoked all through it (she still does), my sister and I are something of a unicorn. The well-fed daughters of a stay at home mother whose interests wandered far from the heath. She was always into art, fashion and good food. I never saw myself in her shoes, exchanging my appetite for world domination for a domestic life—marriage and motherhood occupied a marginal position in the grand scheme of things, in the infinite constellation of accolades I craved to achieve. If elopement and conception found me, great. If they didn’t, well…my life would continue without regrets. Or so I thought. Of course this cynical and detached vision vanished the moment I met my husband. Or rather, when I succumbed to the idea that a person I had known and been friends with for 10 years was really the person I wanted to spend my life with. All of a sudden, the idea of being bound to another human being didn’t sound like a prison. It was liberating, unconstraining. Like coming home after a long day at work and finally unhooking and slowly pulling my bra off. The possibility of motherhood started becoming appealing too: It moved from added perk to visceral desire. The conversion was abrupt, like I had been called to duty by a higher power. An eagerness for motherhood descended upon me like a royal mantle. Suddenly, it didn’t feel like a hypothetical, but like a concrete milestone at arm’s length.

I am under the impression that the birth of my niece Muriel helped this transition. If, up until then, I had felt detached and unmoved by my friends’ spawns or the cute children I encountered on the street, all of a sudden, I was now overtaken by an intense sense of love and overbearing care towards a baby. She unlocked emotions I didn’t know were possible—let alone existed—within me. Like a latent fire suddenly turning a forest into an inferno.

I suppose the conversion process and subsequent explosion of affection between the two of us was simply a byproduct of biology and a chemical bond triggered by our shared blood and genes. However, at the age of 31, my heart was now open to the idea that children can be, and most definitely are, precious additions to our existence rather than a box to tick off to justify womanhood. Their snot, shit, clumsy and loud ways weren’t something to curl my nose at. They became adorable parts of life. Something to cherish, laud and write on the calendar as progress as opposed to cringe at.

Over the past year or so, people—media—have been reporting that motherhood has turned into an aesthetic aspiration. Something to curate and parade on social media, with children as the ultimate luxury accessory in a world with crumbling values. Mothers around the world have monetized this status. Choosing not to display your perfect family portrait to a wide web of strangers is a missed opportunity. I noticed this practice even in individuals with no background in what we call “influencing”; regular people are seemingly seeing motherhood as a step towards a new career path rather than a moment to be idle and disconnect from the toxic patterns of our 9-5s. The pipeline from career woman to career mother follows a similar script for many. One day they are showing off their remarkable achievements, new jobs and awards; the next they are staging an immaculately art directed photoshoot announcing their baby bump. It feels like a preemptive move, a justification for the imminent postpartum-induced hiatus that will forcefully remove them from the high life and catapult them into a not so glamorous secret society composed by sleep-deprived parents and hysterical babies. Why does it all have to be so performative? So curated? So unnatural? Yes, motherhood is a full time job. I can’t deny that. It starts before the baby is even born with endless restrictions, health checks, gruesome exams and optimization routines.

Nutrition and water intake become a priority. Prenatal courses replace trendy workout classes. Remembering to take your daily supplements becomes crucial. Organizing the house, ordering supplies, preparing a birth plan and discussing the separation of chores with your partner sweep in. Will we have a baby shower? What should we include in the registry? What are some non-negotiable purchases? How about a cradle that grows into a toddler bed? Will we choose a Montessori or Waldorf-style school? Is homeschooling a better option? Will I ever fit my beloved shoes again?

Your mind starts spinning with questions. Topics you never had to consider before—like how to heal chapped nipples—start appearing on your Google searches. It’s time to find those expensive baby suits on the second-hand market, so you stop looking for archival fashion and throw your perfected algorithm out of the window. Who cares about fancy outfits anyways. If you are lucky, you’ll be able to wear the expensive trousers you got at a sample sale only two years from now. The “snap-back” is not guaranteed, and who even cares about that when your body is preparing to nurture and keep a person alive.

Motherhood is daunting. Your vagina rips, your nose swells, uninterrupted sleep becomes the only thing you care about. It can feel like a tug of war between the longing for going back to “normal” and the knowledge that nothing will be “normal” again. It’s a transformative trip towards a life—one hopes—full of love and fulfilment. A superpower granted to women to save humanity from extinction. No amount of Reddit threads or advice from other mothers can truly prepare you for what’s next. For the fears, anxiety and thrill that comes from birthing a child—will they grow up to hate you? How to ensure they will be a productive member of society instead of an asshole?

I have a lot of questions lingering in my mind since discovering the gift of life was thrown at me in the form of molecular fusion between my husband’s genes and mine. Each day has been different; every month served us with a new perspective. I started writing this at the four month mark—or fourteen weeks pregnant as they say in medical jargon—and I am now close to the end. In less than two months I will be a mother. What type of mother, I ask myself daily. Strict, hands-off, fun, almond, subservient, stern, playful, good, bad, modern, conservative or progressive? Who knows. I guess I’ll find out at the end of my days.

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Because of his delay, though, I decided to anticipate the announcement and launch of NONSENSE magazine—a publication I co-founded and direct, powered by NONSENSE PROJECTS.

Those of you who have been reading this newsletter for a while know that I have been after this achievement for a few years—editorial independence was the very reason why I started this newsletter in 2021. I was “tired” of being pigeonholed by football and culture storytelling and I was yearning for the freedom to express my thoughts without having to go through the process of rejection that naturally happens when pitching to magazines and media. Soon, however, even Substack became too tight for me. It was a great platform to exercise my literary prowess and unload things I thought about, but it did not—and does not—satisfy a deeper editorial craving. I wanted more!

Having worked with independent magazines for over a decade, I knew creating a publication was not going to be easy. Yet, I had to let go of the fear of failure and follow this dream of mine no matter what.

Finally, after years (two to be precise) of struggle, we pushed through and, in March of 2025, we launched a pilot version of the platform. Issue 00 was dedicated to New York City and the people that push the city forward because that’s where the whole idea was born and we were living in Brooklyn at the time.

The project was extremely experimental and mostly digital, with a super limited edition of 50 printed copies produced and distributed at an event we hosted in Milan chez our friends Simple Flair and RIVIERA.

The whole ordeal was exciting, but it felt too small. It wasn’t really commercially viable, and my goal was to get the stories of the people featured in front of as many people as possible. I know that the internet should be the answer there, but I didn’t want to be yet another online magazine—especially as we prided ourselves on following a slow publishing cycle.

So we went back to the drawing board, expanded the concept, planned a full issue with distribution in mind and invested (scary word) the necessary money for production, printing and now we have a full magazine that’s going to be available at some of my favorite bookshops worldwide. What a feeling!

Our debut issue "ARTISANS" features everything from new age craftsmen/women, to old timers who have made "quality over quantity" the mantra of their life. It celebrates their talent and the radical decision to dedicate their time and resources to crafting things by hand in a world that encourages us to consume more, hustle hard and annihilate our cognitive abilities in front of an endless scroll of content.

The issue contains features about Mia Kombucha, Parafernalia, Giro, Laguna~B, In Casa by Paboy, Studio Eidola, Azur, Peppino Trevisan, Tenuta La Poggiona, Iammi, Kimchi Pop, Sara Barbanti, Actawl, Kusheda Mensah, Asia Clarke, Aminata Mboup, Alex Macedo, La Touche. And it could not have been possible to achieve without the incredible contributions of Alessandro Menegaz, Alessandro Trevisan, Alex Macedo, Anthony La Touche, , Benedetta Stefani, Bianca Felicori, Carlo Ottaviani, Caterina Capelli, David Eardley, Dimitri D’Ippolito, Erin Eun-Young Kim, Gilda Bruno, Giulia Frigieri, Glauco Canalis, Jason Nicco-Annan, Luca Strano, Lukas Saxer, Marco Rizzi, Nicolas Polli, , Tatsumi Milori Matsumoto and Xavier Fajardo.

A special shout out is reserved for Erica Delfini, the sales and marketing director of Tenuta La Poggiona who believed in the project from the get go and is going to be our partner throughout the year for a bunch of delicious events.

The magazine is now available to shop online at KD PRESSE.

As part of the magazine’s new editorial direction, we decided to take the online platform offline and I am currently taking the time to figure out what’s the best path forward for the extra stories we want to promote throughout the year. We do have a newsletter we use for sporadic announcements, which I encourage you to subscribe to if you are interested in following our evolution. The platform will most likely change, but at least I know who to migrate over without having to ask to sign up for the nth time.

In the meantime, follow our IG to stay updated on new stockists and all of the amazing events we are planning from now until the end of the year.

Ciao!

December 17 marked my one-year wedding anniversary (yeah, wow. I know! I am a married a woman,who would have thought!), and, looking back, there are numerous lessons I learned over the past 376 days. It would be a lie to say this was the hardest thing I ever had to do (keeping a consistent workout schedule has been more challenging), but it would also be dishonest to act like marriage is a walk in the park.

The topic of relationships and marriage is a hot potato. Everybody has a different opinion on it, and most of the time it can lead to controversial takes and conclusions. Multiple people have written about it on here and the numerous online magazines that offer advice on personal relationships. Apparently having a boyfriend, let alone a husband, is embarrassing now.

Personally, I have yet to form an opinion about what makes for a “good” marriage because I think each person is different, and it’s hard to come up with a universal rulebook. What works for my family cannot—and certainly will not—work for a Hollywood couple or those who subscribe to polyamory.

There are parameters and values that I live by—and I highly suggest you also come up with a similar list and make sure they align with your future spouse—but under no circumstances do I believe these are the absolute truth or the only way forward. They are personal choices based on the singular experience and life aspirations of each one of us. Obviously, I think there are some objective, fundamental principles one should follow (things like faithfulness, truthfulness, nonviolence, etc.) in order for the relationship to thrive and last as long as possible, but these are applicable to every corner of life. Morals, I think they are called.

As this is my first marriage, and therefore a territory I am only beginning to understand, my sense of what this bond entails is still very much in formation. For that reason, it felt more meaningful to reflect on this new dimension of my life rather than to take stock of the many positive developments in my career. Besides, I discovered that few things are more satisfying than reaching a breakthrough on something you have spent the last six months discussing with your significant other—possibly even winning them over in the process. So, without further ado, here’s a list of things I learned in this first year of being married.

1. INCREDIBLY MODEST COURTHOUSE WEDDING VS TRADITIONAL CHURCH CELEBRATION

   The first, and probably most satisfying, lesson is that the size and cost of your ceremony will have no impact on the outcome your marriage. There is truly no difference between getting married at the Brooklyn courthouse in a place that looks like the hall of a post office, and having an opulent, Instagram-style wedding.
   
   As somebody who was raised catholic in Italy and only had one idea of what a wedding celebration should look like (flowers, extensive guest list, church sermon, delicious reception and so on), a more modest, unorthodox and fast wedding in a secular institution sounded pathetic. Broke behavior, as they say. That was until I was presented with the endless issues that come with organizing a marriage service when you and your prospective spouse come from different cultures, backgrounds and—above all—countries.
   
   My wedding service costed about $60 in total (not counting the commute from our home to the courthouse in the subway, or the wine bottle and food we bought afterwards to celebrate the moment). We had no guests, except the mandatory witness required by law and both me and the groom wore clothing we already owned. Our wedding photos are also quite funny: we took a polaroid down to the Greenpoint waterfront and asked random passersby if they could take pictures of us together.
   
   Does that make me a pick me or financially-savvy? Everyone is entitled to their opinion on this topic, but what I know is that we saved a massive amount of money—the average NYC wedding costs $75,000—time and, not least importantly, all of the headaches that come with having to make a guest list for the “most important day of your life”. Do you invite that uncle you haven’t seen in 15 years? Will your sixth-removed cousin get offended if my grandmother travels from Italy and they weren’t invited, though they live in the same borough? Is raw fish allowed at the reception? Thankfully, I had to answer none of the above.
   
   I thought I would regret not having my family or close friends present as I am not immune to wanting to share the big happenings with my loved ones but if there is one thing I learned is that there are a million better ways to celebrate “love” with them. It doesn’t have to be an isolated event.
   
   As the only person in my lineage to have eloped in a very secular, almost Las Vegas style way, I have left a bigger impression than if I had a traditional Catholic wedding with big flower arrangements and a dress I’ll never wear again.
   
   The two-people omakase dinner attended by me and my new husband on the night of our ceremony gave me more life than having to spend hours going around a room thanking people I had not seen in 15 years for showing up and for their $100 contribution to the “start of my new, marital life” (I had already been living with my husband for years before we decided to make it “official).
   

2. DISNEY FAIRYTALES DO NOT EXIST IN REAL LIFE, BUT SCREAMING FIGHTS SHOULDN’T BE THE NORM.
   
   As somebody who had never really thought about marriage growing up—and really not until my late 20s—the experience has, so far, proved positive and energizing. Quite the opposite of what I was led to believe as a woman coming of age in the 2000s. Of course I cannot deny that there are ups and downs and everyday is a big learning curve, but such is life. Isn’t it?
   
   Arguments happen, but each confrontation should lead to improvement in the communication department. I guess being in a relationship with somebody I had been friends with for 10 years prior to falling in love also helps—we know each other’s quirks like the inside of our pockets.
   
   So far, this has been one of the most interesting and prolific years of my life both personally and professionally. As I settled into my new “wife” shoes, my dreams and ambitions also continued to manifest. In fact, exchanging vows has ushered in an era of unprecedented boldness when it comes to my work.
   I refused projects that didn’t feel right and had the courage of saying “no” to things that didn’t really serve my trajectory. Was I emboldened by the fact that I now had somebody who could shoulder my losses if I needed? Not sure, but it definitely helps to have a person you can rely on if shit hits the fan. This leads me to the next lesson.
   

3. MARRY SOMEBODY WHO WAS YOUR FRIEND FIRST.
   
   I know this can sound difficult to put in practice because the concept of friendship is quite loose nowadays, but I think it’s something we should all put more weight on. A good friend should have all of the qualities of a good spouse and vice-versa.
   
   What I learned in the course of this one year, and really over the five years of my relationship, is that marrying somebody you were friends with at first really helps to avoid a few of those inevitable hurdles that come from sharing your space with another person.
   
   They know what you like and dislike, and you have already experienced their weird preferences in food, TV shows or literature. This doesn’t mean that it will always be smooth sailing. People aren’t static; they evolve, change their minds and behavior all the time. Be prepared for that.
   

4. MARRY SOMEBODY WITH THE SAME LIFE VALUES AS YOU.

   
   Your spouse will have traits or do things that you don’t agree with ALL THE TIME. They will differ in taste, they will be into hobbies you could care less about and they may not know how to clean the floor as perfectly as you do. These are all annoying, but resolvable things. One thing you absolutely should not have a differ opinion on is your fundamental life values.
   
   What does that mean? Well, you can’t compromise on things like: ideal family, work ethic, integrity, self-respect, dignity or flexibility (just to name a few). If you believe you should start saving money for your kids college fund when you aren’t even pregnant yet, while your spouse prefers to spend it on Louis Vuitton bags or flashy jewelry…let me tell you: this relationship won’t last long. If it does, it will be a very miserable one.
   

5. YOUR SPOUSE IS NOT A MIND READER.
   
   We all wish our significant other could be a better version of ourselves, doing all the things we want them to do without having to explain or ask. But unfortunately we have yet to reach that stage of human evolution where telepathy is embedded within us. They can’t read your mind. Sure, they pick up cues and learn our preferences as the marriage progresses but it won’t be immediate. Do not be afraid to ask exactly what you want, when you want it and how you want it. Create a wishlist of chores you’d like for them to take on; clarify the ways in which you like to be loved (gifts, words of affirmation, breakfast in bed); be upfront about the restaurants you’d like to eat at. The results won’t be instant, it will take time and training, but do not relent. We also do things our partners dislike, so let’s not cast stones from a glass house.

6. MARRIAGE = TEAM

   
   It is true that, with the decline of marriage as the only way to share a room with a partner, committed relationships take all shapes and forms nowadays, but getting married still means you are now legally bound to a person. This step alone—bringing the government into your household—should incentivize everyone to think really well before making it “official”.

   
   However, once you’ve gone ahead and signed those papers, you should now be committed to being a team. What does this mean? Well, if you’ve ever played a team sport you should know that sometimes your personal wants will need to be sacrificed for a higher, collective purpose. All decisions should be discussed, dissected, evaluated and taken based on the fact that now another person will be affected. If kids are involved, it gets even harder.

   
   This may sound like a no brainer, but it’s not so obvious. Sometimes you think things that you’ve spent your whole life mastering for yourself can continue on the same path, but even the smallest of decisions can throw the other person off.
   

7. WHEN YOU MARRY, YOU MARRY THEIR WHOLE FAMILY.

   
   I am a strong proponent of the concept that marrying a person should mean creating a new family from scratch. In fact, I stand by the Italian saying “Tra moglie e marito, non mettere mai il dito” (translation: don’t get between a husband and wife). However, I would be a fool to think you can just erase their whole lineage. When you marry a person, you marry their whole family, so make sure to discuss what type of involvement you are ok with well in advance or it can get ugly.
   
   Disclaimer for the women interested in marrying an Italian man: be ready to face their mother often.

8. BIG GESTURES ≠ TRUE LOVE OR #RELATIONSHIP GOALS.

   
   The media has led us all to believe that if your partner doesn’t buys you a Chanel bag, sends you $300 out of nowhere, or takes you on luxurious vacations every other month, then they do not love you enough. All of this is crap. True love is marked by the small, mundane gestures they do for you everyday: sharing a cup of coffee in the morning before work, watching a trashy TV show together even when it’s not in their style or making sure your laptop is charged ahead of a big day.
   
   Ditch the vision and ideals cast onto us by a lifestyle that was once reserved for celebrities and oligarchs, embrace the fact that true love is silent and consistent. Not loud and sporadic. Those 100 roses delivered to your coworker may hide a dark secrets. Be appreciative of the daily cues.
   

9. IT’S WHAT’S INSIDE THAT MATTERS.

   
   Taste in clothing, education level, hobbies, objective beauty (though being physically attracted to your spouse really helps on those days you’d like to kick their butt). These are all superficial and fluctuating characteristics that, at the end of the day, do not matter. What matters is their mind, their heart and how they move in the world. Sometimes you’ll disagree on the outfit they want to wear to dinner but, with time, you can turn them into very stylish people!
   
   What you should evaluate is how they speak to the waiter. Do they treat them with respect or do they look down on them because they are service workers? A little fashion faux-pas can be corrected, rudeness cannot.
   

10. UNTANGLE EVERY DISAGREEMENT, EVEN WHEN THEY SEEM PETTY.

    Disagreements are normal. We disagree with our parents, our friends, our teachers. Why would we not disagree with our spouses?
    
    Disagreements can feel iffy. Generally speaking, confrontation is never fun—especially when it turns into a heated debate. Sometimes, the root of the argument is something silly like leaving cups by the sink instead of washing them. Maybe your spouse will dismiss your complaint the first time, and that’s what will make you not want to discuss your frustration again. But trust me when I say it’s better to face the issue when it’s fresh and small than wait until it turns into an avalanche of shit. A series of little petty differences will become a big conglomerate of very serious resentments if left undiscussed.
    
    It can take time to comb through these seemingly superficial differences, but tackling them early on instead of sweeping them under the rug will save you a divorce later.
    

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    I am a novice so do not take me as an expert, nor somebody you should go to for guidance, nor think that I will turn this into an advice column. Actually, writing this felt a little bit cringy. It took me eleven days to decide if I should send this or not. Maybe it could have been a private diary entry rather than a newsletter. other topics, such as how to take over the world, should be on my mind when writing. Jk.
    
    Marriage has been fun. Tying the knot, if anything, has made me a better person: less anxious, more positive, and with something to look forward to. Most days, I wake up laughing and go to sleep laughing. If I have a bad day, I have somebody I can turn to for a pick me up. Obviously, these are things that can—and should—happen in any kind of love partnership, even if marriage is not on the radar. However, taking this step forward together provides a sense of safety and closeness that, despite being in a committed relationship for years, I am new to experiencing. It’s like graduating from the NCAA to the NBA.
    
    

    Subscribe now

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    As the year comes to an end, I would like to shout out some projects and things that I look forward to see growing (these are no ads):
    
    1. Equator (www.equator.org): an independent magazine of politics, culture and art.
    

    2. CNSSS (www.cnsss.it): a super nice art gallery in Palermo, Italy.

    3. RARES (www.raresmaterials.wixsite.com): a library of reclaimed materials for purchase or rent based in Milan.
    

    4. by Tasnim Ahmed: a fantastic fashion newsletter by a true lover of garments and their history.
    
    5. Body of Work (www.bodyofwork-studio.com): an artisanal clothing design studio based in Toronto, Canada.
    
    This list is super non-exhaustive and there are endless more projects I’d love to see come out on top in 2026. Including my own magazine. However, I am tired now. Bye!
    
    

    
    
    

Writing about writing is boring, though. And, today, my intention wasn’t to blow the dust off my rusty keyboard to complain about the state of internet literature. In fact, I’m here for a nobler purpose: To share my thoughts on the old myth that boredom fuels creativity, and that periods of idleness are not only useful but essential for inciting inspiration and feeling less discouraged by the state of things.

At the height of summer, in a moment of deep creative discomfort and disappointment, I found myself experiencing a level of mental emptiness I had not experienced in years. As an antidote to this intellectual atrophy, I began looking for some interesting reads that could accompany me to the beach without being too heavy or brainy.

I needed something light yet stimulating—a book that would help me restore my will to do while teaching me something new. My research was set on the kind of summer read that would help me get back to my projects without dreading the many ugly parts that define of small businesses. You know, like finding the money to keep going, coordinating a team, invoicing and following up with missed payments without reaching the end of the day wanting to partake in the ancient Japanese practice of harakiri. The good stuff!

Eventually, I stumbled across Celeste Headlee’s “Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving”.
Without reading the synopsis, I knew this was the book I needed to buy and pack in my summer bag. The title alone ticked all of the boxes present on my very loose list of requirements. However, there was more to it than a mere feel-good catchphrase, I felt called out by it: Overworking, overdoing and underliving was something I had been partaking in for quite a while. I could, potentially, even quantify it.

Since leaving my last corporate position in 2018, I have been running around like a headless chicken looking for very inconsequential ways to find my space in the world. First freelancing with various companies trying to make a name for myself as a writer-creative-cum-editorial-consultant-whathaveyou, and then, co-founding not one, but two businesses in 2023.

These projects turned out to be somewhat successful, so I should not be complaining. However, I can’t hide the fact that they pushed me further and further away from the few things that I actually enjoy doing: Writing, researching, reading, learning.

It had become crystal clear that I needed to stop for a second and pull myself up and out the quicksands my situation had turned into. I needed to take some time to analyze what was happening to me and my drive, without the constant anxiety of emails, projects and strategizing for the future.

Would this book teach me how to do it? There was only one way to find out.

It would be an understatement to say the book never made it anywhere near the beach. I devoured it the week before leaving for my summer destination. It was a truly riveting read!

The author did an excellent job of balancing the research—including a brilliant retelling of the history of labor and work as we know it and the various rules that come with it—with personal anecdotes. I saw myself reflected in her words time and again.

Just like Celeste, I kept the gas pedal of my professional life pressed to the floor while the tank ran perpetually on empty. How long could I keep this up before landing in a straightjacket? By my calculations, not very long.

My work, social life and personal endeavors all suffered from it. I had even lost my passion for those businesses I had started with so much joy and aspiration.

Social media, including this very platform, had a lot to do with this imminent burnout too. As Headlee writes “Part of our busyness problem is that social media allows us to see the accomplishments of others. It leads us to want to ‘keep up with the Joneses.’ But now, instead of just keeping up with a few friends and neighbors, social media makes us feel like we need to keep up with the world.”

Gosh, did this hit me like a truck driving at full speed!

I’m well aware of the brutal consequences of spending too much time on social media—it’s a topic I find myself bringing up again and again. Yet it’s not so easy to detach from these vicious platforms when it feels like the only way to be recognized is by constantly updating others, haunted by the fear of being left behind or forgotten. Even with over a decade of excellent work and reputation to stand on, it’s surprisingly easy to fall into the trap of the social media illusion. I surely am a victim and totally suffer from Stockholm Syndrome.

Of course the algorithm wants us to incessantly feed the machine with content in exchange for a cheap ego boost. That’s how these media giants make their big bucks. But are we, creative professionals, sure that there is no way out? How do you create good material if 80% of our time is wasted lurking on others and scrutinizing their—often manufactured and polished—success only yo depress ourselves?

Most of the users on social media live in a way we could never reach in a thousand year for multiple reasons. Number one: many of us did not was to be Hollywood celebrities, so why are trying to live up to a new class of D-listers who’d sell their mothers just to get paparazzi’d outside of Carbone? I know I like to sip wine at my favorite bar without continuously looking around to see who may be listening to my conversations or wait to pounce and snap a picture of my wardrobe malfunction.

Even writers, a category once elusive and mysterious, have now become five minute celebrities, banking on their “personal brand” instead of the prestige of their words. I understand the media landscape has vastly changed and only a very minute subset of intellectuals get hefty sums for their op-eds, but where did our dignity go? Everything is an advertorial.

I recently rewatched Lena Duhnam’s GIRLS, with the goal to better understand her twisted mind now that my prefrontal cortex is fully developed. Leaving details of her perversion and the level of mental illness affecting each one of the protagonists aside, I remember sulking raising my eyebrows at the episode where she’s hired by GQ to write for their advertisers section.
Clearly delusional about her position within the magazine, Lena’s character Hannah shut down anyone and everyone who told her she wasn’t “really writing” but just manufacturing consensus for whichever company was sponsoring the article that month.

Season 3 of GIRLS launched only 11 years ago, but that sense of shame projected by Hannah in what is arguably one of the most popular TV series amongst millennial girls has completely vanished from our collective consciousness. Who cares if I have to intellectually prostitute myself if that’s the only way I can make money? Posting about my gifted outfits or recommending the latest beauty serum sent to me by yet another skincare brand is just part of the routine nowadays. More selfies less longform. People are more likely to react to the latest facial treatment than any poems or article one wrote. Consequently, our work brain can never shut down.

Did you know that the five day week and an eight hour work day was introduced by Henry Ford in the 1920s, not because he was a Good Samaritan but because he found out people would be way more productive when not working into exhaustion?!

As a foolish follower of the “productivity” propaganda, I have organized my workday around a full 8 hour schedule (sometimes even longer) since first becoming an active member of the workforce. Even worse, I have often judged others as lazy and “not committed enough” when they decided their brain worked best from 9AM to 12PM, leaving the rest of the day for other—more fulfilling—activities like reading or gardening.

What if I receive an email at 5:40PM? Up until two weeks ago, my brain told me I had to answer immediately otherwise the opportunity would set sail and leave me. Ridiculous! If it did leave me, then it wasn’t meant to be.

Given the state of the creative industry and the economy surrounding this whimsical bubble, trust me when I say not many projects deserve my immediate answer. More often than not, it’s an unnecessary waste of time.

Did you know that child labor laws were NOT introduced because it’s unethical and evil to have literal toddlers on the production line, but because people in power were afraid of mass extinction given the high mortality rates amongst child workers?

I did not know, and my eyes widened when I finished the paragraph where Celeste mentions this. I was woefully ignorant about anything that has to do with modern work culture. Everything is pretty much propaganda pushed by a mix of religious beliefs and people in power. Yes, even religion swindled us into believing working hard is the only way to a good life.

Coming out of a bad break up? Put your head down and work harder than ever! Being successful will really show him what he’s missing out on! Ha! Sad, stressed, unfulfilled in your current position? Double on the hours you work so you can finally reach that promotion you have been dreaming of.

This is the mentality we have been brainwashed with. But ultimately nobody cares about your success if you are a piece of shit, and that promotion really won’t bring you any joy if you are depressed because you forwent the things that are truly important in life.

A passage that particularly stood out for me was this: “There is a wealth of historical data that suggests we prefer a balance of leisure and toil. But we have been convinced through more than two hundred years of propaganda that inactivity is the same as laziness, and that leisure is a shameful waste of time.”

I feel lazy and groggy every time I take some time to rest. Instead of unwinding, my brain reminds me of all the things I will have to take care of when I am back ok and I want to vomit. Since parting ways with the corporate hustle 7 years ago, there hasn’t been a single time I took a trip without my laptop. The incessant need to stay on top of things has ruled my life even in the middle of a suffocating summer when I really should just forget everything and enjoy myself. Without realizing, I drove myself deeper and deeper into the ground, slowly burning my desire to create something that was worth putting out.

For many years, I have operated in overdrive. I thought that if I stopped for even just one day, years of sacrifice and hard work would be lost and I would fall out of the minds of those who were procuring me jobs to secure my livelihood. Even when I had something good to focus on, fear of not being able to make it last kept me chained to a schedule I really did not love.

I guess something clicked right before I discovered Celeste Headlee’s phenomenal book at the end of July. I had reached a point of no return. I was craving idleness. I dreamed of doing nothing, not thinking about anything and just succumbing to lethargy—not in a romantic Italian way, but in a “bear going into hibernation” type of way. Sifting through the pages of that book simply validated what I already knew: In order to produce something worth putting out, one needs to take extensive breaks and allow boredom to emerge.

Of course I understand this may come off as entitled and privileged, I am not blind to the struggle most of the population out there. The vast majority of people need to do multiple jobs to put a warm plate of food on the table, and “taking a break” is often an impossible ask.

Even in places like Italy, where life is fetishized as mindful and slow, the reality of things is slightly bleaker than Instagram makes it seem. The only people taking lengthy breaks belong to the upper class. Although it wasn’t always like this.

According to Anthropologist Marshall Sahlins, our hunter-gatherer ancestors were the “original affluent society” because they met their needs with relatively little labor. They worked approximately 15 to 20 hours a week, and enjoyed a lot of free time. Of course their technology was pretty rudimentary compared to ours, and they couldn't spend their leisure time watching opera or visiting museums, but they had it pretty good when it comes to work-life balance.

In his 1968 essay titled “The Original Affluent Society”, Sahlins writes: “The world’s most primitive people have few possessions, but they are not poor. Poverty is not a certain small amount of goods, nor is it just a relation between means and ends; above all it is a relation between people. Poverty is a social status. As such it is the invention of civilization.”

Wow. As we say in Italy si stava meglio quando si stava peggio (It was better when it was worse—to translate it very superficially).

Going back to Celeste’s book, what hit me is how she discussed productivity and how she was eventually able to withdraw from the rat race—as it’s colloquially know—by implementing very simple and effective rules, such as limiting her time on social media to a few hours a week and, most notably, traveling by train whenever possible. Mind you, Celeste lives in the USA, a place that is not really known of its state of the art train lines.

Unconsciously, I have started doing something similar since relocating to Palermo last year: I ditched my car in favor of something more…uhmm…analog? As long as I can reach my destination on foot and the weather permits, I will walk to my appointments and carry out all of my errands with the oldest means of transportation known to men: My feet. So far, nobody has died or waited hours for my arrival. If anything, I can proudly say I produce 0 carbon emissions in a city where traffic is, well, pretty insane.

We claim to be busy all the time but really, we fill our day with useless actions like scrolling and binge watching series on Netflix until it’s late night and now we won’t be able to wake up at 7AM to work out and read before diving into work. I am so guilty of this and not even a life sentence will redeem me. I even opened my IG a few times since I started writing this essay. I clearly need to reprioritize what I lend attention to.

To be completely honest, I didn’t disengage from social media in the 10 days I spent at the beach after reading the book, however, I was able to unplug the neurons that deal with work-induced anxiety and stress. And I successfully did nothing.

The first few days were incredible. I slept long, I swam in some of the most beautiful waters the Mediterranean has to offer, I connected (and quarreled) with my parents, I read another book and…I allowed myself to get bored.

And let me tell you, boredom is truly incredible. It resets your brain and makes space for very deep thinking. The kind of reflection that is comparable to mystical ascension. I don’t know if it’s because I am getting closer and closer to the middle age, thus becoming wiser and more self-conscious, but the moments immediately after entering this state of ennui offered a window into what I truly want out of life. Spoiler alert: It is not to kill myself trying to achieve goals that stroke my ego in the eyes of others, nor to be successful in a way that does not reflect my personal values.

Of course, I did start to get restless around day 6. The monkey mind crept up on me. I began tossing and turning and picking up my phone as soon as I woke up. I knew I had to keep strong and allow myself to get through the remaining 10 days of recreation, so I began going to swim earlier in the morning. The next 4 days went by in a breeze. I had reached a level of relaxation that I had not experienced in years, maybe even since college. I felt so deeply rejuvenated and detached from my emails and professional life, the idea of going back to it excited me.

As I ease my way back into work—and yes, I know it was only 10 days off but a girl has got to start somewhere—one thing is for certain, I am now fully ready to commit to a new schedule. One where I am actually in charge of how I spend my time and allows me to incorporate research, development and hobbies without being afraid of missing out on emails that are definitely not going to change my life.

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This piece is not supposed to be a self-help guide, rather it’s the product of 10 days of doing nothing. Writing is something I always go back to, no matter how busy or distracted I am—it’s a visceral need. A lot of my endeavors revolve around this practice and I hope to be able to expand my literary mission soon. I have wanted to publish a print collection of essays for a really long time but, so far, I never took it seriously. Same with my father’s biography. After I get those done, I would love to turn the latter into something that can be adapted to the screen. I may be biased, but my father’s life is incredibly cinematic. Sometimes, when he’s recounting his many experiences, I have to stop him and fact check because of how absurd they are.

I do not say these words lightly. My father grew up surrounded by the mafia, in a Palermo that is very different from the city I live in now. His childhood home didn’t have a heating system, he saw people getting shot, he was surrounded by people who were constantly in and out of prison. Yet, he has never lost his love for his birthplace or for life. He left as a teenager, blessed with good feet by the football Gods, to fulfill the dream of my grandfather: For one of his children to become a professional football player. He did just that and with his talent he was able to give me, my sister and our family a life he would have never imagined to have himself.

If I am where I am today, it’s because of the sacrifices my parents made and their unfaltering support, juxtaposed with their teachings about work ethic and never giving up. As an overachiever, I—too often—took this to the next level. I didn’t stop when it was necessary and cried incessantly when things didn’t go my way.

Business isn’t really my biggest talent and I embarked on two businesses completely clueless. They were all just ideas that sounded good and liberating. At times, they turned out to be more of a prison than an exciting personal pursuit and, because I was afraid and ashamed of potential failure, I succumbed to stress and anxiety too easily, consequently demanding too much from those around me.

I am trying to get rid of this way of doing things. Not in a “live, love, laugh” manner, but following my gut and making space for activities that make me excited about going back to creating.

I had almost lost my love for writing. For months, my stomach turned when I looked at any of the many writing softwares installed on my laptop. I didn’t touch my notes or my notebook either, I lost my appetite for it. Even when I wrote texts for friends, I did it not to disappoint them but, deep down, I did not care about the output. They were just words against a white backdrop. Many a time, I submitted the first draft even when I knew I could do better.

This is the first time in a long time I free flow words from my head to “paper” and I am not crippled by self-doubt. I really felt the need to open my laptop and just go with whatever my fingers were releasing. Now, THIS is liberating.

I didn’t think this feeling was ever going to come back to me. Turns out, all I needed to do was nothing for a few days.

In a way, NONSENSE editorial is an evolution of my Substack journey merged with my background in independent publishing. I get to dictate the pace, the themes, the aesthetic, and the overall direction of it all. It’s a great feeling.

Please check it out and let me know what you think. In the future, I want to commission writers and add a poetry section. But I am also open to ideas. After all, we position ourselves as an incubator!
Thanks for reading!

Now that I got the prophetic and somewhat moralistic part out of the way, let’s look at all the finish lines I never reached, but that are still waiting to see me arrive: 

1. MY FATHER’S BIOGRAPHY
   
   In 2023 I set out to monetize this newsletter while writing my father’s biography in public. It did not work out as well as I had imagined. Not only was I not able to go further than maybe one chapter, but I also failed to continue recording and archiving his accounts and stories. Perhaps I got busy with other stuff, but I refuse to find an excuse. The fault is 100% mine. Since I had already turned on the paid subscription option and some people did pay to read what I was writing, you can only imagine how dead I felt inside when I realized I could not keep up with the commitment. Yet, I decided to set the dread aside and move on, knowing one day (hopefully soon) I will get back to it and it will be the most important writing of my life. 
   

2. PUBLISH A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS 
   
   I really wanted to turn my essays into a series of published booklets called Things I Thought About Vol.1 (and then 2,3,4..etc. You get the gist), but just like above, something—mostly myself—hindered me from achieving this. Maybe I was not ready for it, but I did have a full concept of what these little books would look like and it wasn’t something unattainable. I guess I will try again in 2025. 
   

3. FULLY LAUNCH NONSENSE PROJECTS

   Nonsense Projects is a very hybrid and abstract creative studio and project that I—alongside my collaborators—have been working hard on. We have an editorial side which is mainly my baby and what kept me away from writing other material, and a more experimental part that is a blend of the work we do for clients and the endeavors we put forward ourselves (eg. RISERVE). While the core part of the business is up and running as a B2B service, we have failed to finalize the website due to some technical issues and building delays. I was very hard on myself and my co-founder/technologist for the extreme respite but as I was writing this reflection, I realized it was maybe for the better. Personally, it was my first year as a business owner (2x) and let’s just say I had a lot to learn. Let’s go!
   

4. KEEP A CONSISTENT WORKOUT ROUTINE

   I had started the year with a bang by running every day on the Palermo waterfront and doing some strength training, but I let work, traveling and a minor knee injury (nothing serious) slow me down and make me lazy. I will not make any new year resolutions but I definitely want to focus on getting stronger in 2025. I read that building strong muscles is what keeps you from becoming an old hag full of bodily pain and I want to travel the world and be active until I am well into my 90s—warranted I can make it there.
   

5. MAKE AND SAVE MORE MONEY + INVEST

   
   To say I am doing badly financially would be a lie and delusion but compared to the previous years, 2024 was quite dry workwise. I made enough but not as much as I would have liked to. With the sale of my apartment, I earned quite a chunk but I had to dip into the proceeds way more than I had planned. As a result, I often felt very irresponsible. It’s not that was buying luxury goods or getting drunk off Dom Pèrignon every night while taking caviar bumps with the newly acquired lump sum, I was using the cash for items I needed to survive like groceries, rent, and other similar supplies. Yet, at the age of 33, it felt silly. I did have to remind myself that it’s more common for people to sell their home because they can’t afford to keep it multiple times since I let go of mine BY CHOICE. My (uncalled-for) financial anxiety remains, but I learned to count my blessings and look forward to the brighter times that are ahead of me.
   

6. READ MORE INSTEAD OF BEING ONLINE 

   
   Obviously, I love to read and I do think I read quite consistently. However, let’s just say I let social media fill my downtime more than it should have. If, on average, I used to read one book a month, in 2024 I read maybe one every two…or less. That is pretty bad. Maybe I should join a book club.
   

7. SPEND MORE TIME WITH MY NIECE & GRANDMA

   
   I spent plenty of time with my parents since moving to Palermo and parking myself at their home for the summer, but I failed to visit my sister and her family in the North of Italy more than 2 or 3 times. This makes me particularly sad since I have the cutest little niece and I want her to know me for being the cool aunt, not the aunt that never visits. The same goes for my grandmother. Although she’s a particularly vibrant elderly lady, she is now 86 and I don’t know how much time together we have left. My other grandma died in 2020 and, unfortunately, I hadn’t seen her or talked to her in a year when she passed due to various negative family circumstances. That left a devastating void in my life and a hole that has yet to heal. Thinking of my beautiful Sicilian nonna, especially now that I live so close to her old house, makes me tear up and puts me in a somber mood.
   

…and the list goes on.

I had other goals and ambitions for my businesses and projects but work is not all there is to life. Besides, I cannot let you in on ALL of my secrets and dirty laundry. I do have a reputation to upkeep!

Happy New Year folks. In 2025, let’s produce more literature and less crap.

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PS: I had no time for editing, so bare with any errors.

As an adjective, creative is relating to or involving the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work. This is funny given that 80% of today’s work is everything but original.

As a noun, it describes a person who is creative (see above), typically in a professional context.

I participated in a talk panel in front of first-year college students at Lehmann College last week and the host and moderator—a fellow Italian writer, Giulia Baldini—asked us the following question:

“Do you consider yourself creative? If so, how?”

Immediately my mind wandered away from anything I have ever been involved in. Marketing and communications is supposed to be a creative field but in reality, it’s only creative on the surface. The truth is more sinister. Campaigns, content, and strategies are more about the sales figures they generate than the emotional impact they may entice in the viewer.

As crazy as this may sound, in 2024 a mathematician probably has more creative freedom than a creative director…at least in the advertisement world. We often read about the homogenization of art and design or the flattening of collective desirability driven by late-stage capitalism. But is capitalism really driving this shrunk narrative? Or is it more the fact that we have taken the democratization of culture too far?

Today anyone can have a platform to speak about whatever topic fancies their pickle on a particular day. Questioning their qualifications or background is a no-no, almost an offense. Because who has time to verify if Jessica, the certified board dermatologist from Winnipeg, actually holds a degree in the things she claims to be an expert in. She’s wearing scrubs and put subtitles in her video—that’s enough.

Culture is served in pills. Modern creativity is the regurgitation of tributes and old ads repackaged as fresh iterations because most of those who consume these things online have no recollection of the original. They weren’t born! And for those who were, your archive of references and brand memories really depends on where you lived at the time whaveter iconic commercial aired, how much access you had to the internet and how much free time you currenlty have on your hands to research and revisit creativity from the past. And if you do find the time to go on a digital treasure hunt, how much of it hasn’t already been algorithmically curated for hundreds of others users?

Amidst my general jaded-ism (if that’s even a real word), I found solace in this film directed by Gabriel Moses for Corteiz’s latest collaboration with Nike.

I reshared it on my Instagram thinking I was serving a palate cleanser to my loyal followers. In less than a split second,two friends came forward rightfully criticizing my feedback. This was a 1 to 1 replica of an ad the acclaimed sportswear brand proposed in 2001. My jaw dropped and I quickly recanted my statement.

Nothing about the new video was actually groundbreaking; silly little me just didn’t possess the necessary knowledge. As a big fan of Gabriel Moses, to say I was disappointed it would be an understatement. I felt betrayed, hoodwinked! Why would such great artist fall trap to such plagiarism? Then I remembered about my time at those corporations. Naive and full of fresh ideas, constantly facing the question: Ok, can we see an example of how this has succeeded other times?

In these situations your “creative” fire slowly starts to dim, dwindling away from those big, innovative ideas you had when you first set foot in the door. So you start to look for ways to escape from this mundane cycle of proposals and KPIs, dreaming of unlocking a new level of artistic autonomy that only a personal would provide. You quit your job, gather the courage to put yourself out there, beg your friends for favors, work overtime, in the weekends, on holidays just to re-ignite your passion and challenge yourself. At first, it feels great. Then you start hearing about how your new work is now a reference at those very companies you used to offer ideas to and constantly shut you down. Your personal work, things you made with the few pennies you managed to save through the years, becomes their North star. Still, you are not enough for them. So they hire others, maybe cheaper, maybe less difficult or opinionated, to replicate your benchmarks. And from the sidelines all you can say to stay sane is: imitation is the highest form of flattery. Or whatever Oscar Wilde said.

Does imitation pay for the other 20,000 beautiful ideas in the back of my brain? Does it add hours to my days, people to my roster of volunteers, resources to my bank of expertise?

And so I find myself running back to writing. My safe place. The only thing nobody can take away from me. The only creative endeavor that’s hardly replicable. Despite the millions of fantastic writers out there, no one else can process information the way that I do. Nobody can manipulate narrative nuances the way that I do. And that’s because no one experiences the world the same as me. Writing is an experience. An amalgamation of thoughts—something so ethereal, intangible, fleeting—that are so unique to the person generating them.

Even when trends swallow up public discourse, literary platforms turn into egocentric social media and mainstream publications favor influencers over masters, one thing is for certain: writing, in its purest form, remains a honest tool for expression. It’s cheap, it’s selfless, it has no mask. Gossip columns live next scientific papers, poetry coexists with factual reporting. The only thing that matters is how big of a dent it makes in your life.

To my new readers, thanks for being here. I hope you are enjoying my old material. I still have MAAAANY thoughts and opinions I want to discuss on the internet, but my writing talents are currently being employed elsewhere—stay tuned & thank you for your patience.

Anyways. I am making a rare appearance to invite those of you in New York City to a special event we (my creative studio) collaborated on. We took care of the graphic design for Simple Flair’s latest launch—SIMPLE FLAIR GOODS—which is due to debut at downtown’s favorite store COLBO on October 24th. Besides a selection of beautiful pieces by upcoming, talented designers and some vintage pieces from SF’s archive, there will be some spectacular merch for sale…and you guessed it! We designed it.

See you there?

IN OTHER NEWS!

Before flying back to the big U S A, I caught my friend Emilia on her solo trip to Sicily. She wrote a brilliant travel essay about my favorite Sicilian treat: Le Minnelle di Vergine! I think you should read it.

Shop Rat by Emilia Petrarca

The Holiest Cannoli Is Inside a Convent

Ciao! I’ve been traveling alone in Sicily for the last five days and, wouldn’t you know it, I’ve become obsessed with a convent…

Read more

2 years ago · 62 likes · 3 comments · Emilia Petrarca

Bye…for now!

First thing first — if you know my work in football and enjoy my interviews, you must subscribe to . A very important space where I am trying to highlight as many creatives as I can. Each month (hopefully I soon find the time to pick up the pace) I release a new profile.

> Submit yourself and you can too become part of this ever-growing pool of talent. Many people found jobs because of this resource!

https://www.riservelist.com/submission

Ps. looking to launch a more dynamic, easy-to-navigate, version of this platform soon! If any UX designers wanna help, I’ll gladly take it!

Secondly — Many of you have probably seen my baby systemarosa slowly blossom into a fully-fledged company at the intersection of football and fashion. It started as a way to curb my hate for everything that was coming out in the space, but we may have just cracked the code. Given that this is my first personal endeavor in collaboration with someone who was a stranger just a few years ago, and now is an integral part of my life and vision, I think we may have flown too close to the sun but we had the right equipment so now we are floating happily in the sky!

Three months since our launch, we have already landed on the T Mag! Not that that was my ultimate goal, but hey, some mainstream validation does no harm!

Our webstore is immaculate! We curate everything from A to Z — in fact, we landed a partnership with the Serie A in North America and we are cooking some fun activations. Let’s make football great again!

In Philly? Come check us out this weekend :)

Last but not least — Juggling more than one (personal) business at a time is not for the faint-hearted. I learned this the hard way when I ambitiously thought I could both work on the above and launch Nonsense Projects editorial leg and full site at the same time. I have been beating myself up about falling short here, but I am trying to stay positive as it’s a bunch of first times for me. First-time business owner, first-time “magazine”, first-time creative studio, first time creative team in a creative industry’s drought.
If you need art direction, a new website or “tone of voice” for your company/brand, hit us up! We are quite busy but we may be able to squeeze you in. We made this and a bunch of other (lovely) things!

This bakery on Arthur Ave in The Bronx has bread that truly reminds me of home. Highly recommend taking a nice little field trip to purchase some delicious warm baked goods. On the other hand, avoid Trattoria Tra Noi e Voi like the plague. Expensive and Che schifo!

SEE YOU NEXT TIME (MAYBE)!

Well, why not? I fit in the category of people who produce short compositions with grammatically correct language that are nonfiction works. The word essayist evokes maturity; it’s way more intriguing than the general blanket term “writer”.

Imagine being at a party and introducing yourself as an essayist. I am sure the interlocutor would be immediately blown away by the level of intellectual intricacy the word itself evokes.

If I close my eyes and fantasize about the scene, I see myself holding up a martini glass while wearing long lacey gloves and a sleeveless mock neck top, hair slicked back in a tight bun, lips painted in a deep shade of red. If I smoked, I’d also be holding a gold cigarette holder.

Anyway, I painted this vivid image to say one very simple thing: I think this platform has served its purpose and it can no longer exist under its current rule. The weekly format I started with has reached its expiration date and I think I am ready to let it go.

Writing my thoughts on the internet is the modern iteration of the olden diary days and it’s a great format, but I have been feeling the need to concentrate on other literary categories.

I want to see my words on paper, I want to experiment with layouts and print techniques. Plus, I need to keep my creative juices for the editorial branch of Nonsense.
Last but not least, I want to pick My Father’s Project back up and finally find a title for this damn thriller-biography. 

I would also like to spend some time refining my screen-adaptation skills and eventually collaborate with a filmmaker to create a series of storytelling visuals based on very mundane things that happen to all of us but are rarely showcased in an artsy way.

I digressed from the original point AGAIN.

As you probably have guessed by now, this is a farewell. Things I Thought About will cease to exist.
I will leave the archive up but you won’t be receiving my emails anymore; at least for the foreseeable future. Maybe I will change the name to Life As Nao and keep that going, but I have not decided yet.

If you just recently subscribed, I am sorry to let you down but all good things come to an end and sadly you arrived at the end of the party. If you have been my reader since day one, thank you for following my journey to literary emancipation. If you paid for my writing, you are a legend and you helped fuel and boost my confidence. 

Here’s a bunch of great essays you can read and reference (the grammar isn’t always great, but I was trying my best to juggle writing and editing back then):

– Thoughts About Personal Projects 

– Thoughts About Quitting Your Job

– Thoughts About Comparison

– Thoughts About Rejection

– Thoughts About Space & Human Interaction

– Thoughts About Passion

– Thoughts About Choice Fatigue

– Thoughts About Grief (my personal favorite) 

And here’s a list of people you may want to read to fill my absence (lol): 

– Maria Falbo writes about creating a new life away from the city and rural regeneration

– Zoe Allen writes about sports and girly things

– Emily Hubbard writes about life and things in English and Spanish (!!!!) 

– Sam Diss writes about football & culture

– David Eardley writes about design & pop culture

– Paul Graham writes about business and how to be a productive person (not the best in literary style, but great for idea generation) 

Before I go, here are a few things that have brought me joy during the bleak times we are living in (yes, most of it is food):

I felt only a blank page could soothe the existential anxiety that’s been keeping me up at night and shaking me awake at dawn daily. Images of harmless children covered in blood and grey dust keep flashing before me. Their terrified eyes and their trembling little bodies are stuck inside of my eyelids like a recurrent nightmare; the desperate cries and voices of their wretched parents—mothers, fathers, uncles, and aunties—echo in my ears like the strident sound of a fire alarm. I am 2,672 kilometers away from them, sitting in the comforting silence of my living room, but I hear their despair loud and clear.

I feel stuck in a weird loop of angry outbursts that fade into visceral grief, the same kind of pain that overtook me when my grandmother died and I did not have a chance to greet her goodbye. The kind of grief that sneaks up on you when you think you have healed, filling your eyes with heavy salty tears. Before you know, a river is flowing down your cheeks but all you are left to do is to grab a napkin and wipe it, hoping to find strength in the mourning.

I have interrogated myself over and over about the invisible connection between me and the people of Palestine.

Why am I so affected by their plight?

As a child of the Mediterranean, the bond runs deep. Their culinary tradition influenced ours; our people share values, hand gestures, and demeanors. The pistachios I so eagerly eat, the lemons I squeeze in my water, the oranges I peel, they exist because of them.

How can I not feel so close to them when my Jordanian friends are Palestinian, and my Barhaini friends are Palestinian? My Egyptian friends are Palestinian, my Syrian friends are Palestinian. The descendants of humanization, the inventors of agriculture, abundance, and community.

I broke bread and celebrated life with them, how could I abandon them in such cruel times? How could I—anybody—justify their oppression and annihilation?

I have heard their stories, sensed their nostalgia, and seen sorrow curl up their faces as they fantasize about a land they can never visit, let alone return to.

I hold their gifts as sacred. They hang on my walls, they decorate my cabinets, and fill my room with spiced scents. I danced to their music, browsed through what remains of their family history, and soaked up the knowledge that has partially made me who I am today.

How could I not support their struggle?

To be frank, everything feels futile, silly, unreal. I cannot believe I get to choose my outfit, eat delicious foods, and drink superb wine while entire lineages are wiped from the face of the earth.
I cannot believe the blatant lies I read online, the cacophonous tropes, the vicious essence of humanity, or the obvious double standards.

I am left with little to no words for the atrocities inflicted on the people of Palestine (and Congo, and Tigray, and Darfur, and Haiti, and everyone who is not free to be).
I am at a loss of words for those who refuse to acknowledge the pain, sorrow, and demolition that’s being imposed on mothers, fathers, and children who just want to breathe, swim, play football, and grow old enough to see their grandchildren being born.

I am horrified by the lack of critical thinking, the evident brainwashing, and the egotistical delirium affecting millions of people who, even in front of thousands of blown-up limbs, cannot open their eyes and recognize mass murder.

No job, institution, or official in the universe could scare me into thinking that, after all, cutting off water, and electricity and dropping highly poisonous substances on a caged population is the right thing to do to combat terror.

Who is the terror, the accomplice, the enabler when people cannot recognize their disfigured loved ones?
Who is the offender when children are pulled out of their dead mother's womb with no hope to survive?
Who is the attacker when 80-year-olds have been harassed, sieged, and tortured since they were toddlers?
Who decides who deserves to live and who deserves to die?

Rest assured: This isn’t a religious war. Matter of fact, it’s not even a war between states. There is no second state. It’s not even a civil war. It’s the blood-thirst of a psychopath tyrant and his insane entourage.

After years of supporting my Palestinian friends in their sorrow and grief, we have now reached the peak of the disaster. Full families are being annihilated, hospitals and places of worship are bombed…nothing is sacred anymore.

The last escalation wasn’t even that long ago. Maybe two years? But it wasn't enough to galvanize the world and open our eyes in front of a tragedy that’s been a long time coming.

I am sure this piece of writing will vex many people. I will be told I am being all types of cruel, and venomous. But if the writer has one duty in life, it is to use their talent for words to decry atrocities in times like these.

The most disheartening part is the fact that denouncing murderous behavior is labeled as anti-semitic. The Western media, institutions, and rich yuppies are going as far as doxing my colleagues, threatening their livelihoods, and claiming they support terrorist groups, simply for pointing out that what’s happening is not equal on both sides.

I understand the hurt and trauma Jewish people carry. I am sure it’s hard to let go of the thousands of years of persecution and destruction, but why is the same terror justified then?

For as far as I can remember, I have been bombarded with images of mutilated kids covered in dust and blood, sitting on top of rubble. These kids, just like the kids of Gaza today, have never had the chance to live a normal life. A life where they could freely run around and play football if they wanted because at any time they could be stopped by the police and brutalized—their free time bounded by tall metal mesh, their juvenile naivety stripped by the sound of bombs and machine guns.

It feels almost unfair to be sitting with my legs up in the comfort of my safe home as I write this. I am saddened by the lack of empathy for Arab children, women, and men constantly defined as barbaric animals thirsty for the blood of Christians and Jews.

My time in the Middle East, as difficult as it was for my mental health, opened me to a whole new perspective on Islam and its disciples. During the holy time of Ramadan, I discovered an unmatched level of compassion and benevolence. The Advent cannot even remotely compare.

I am grateful for the experience and I will forever hold the friends I made during that period in my heart. Many of them, the majority of them, are Palestinian people who have had to strip their identity away. They had to forego the idea of ever visiting the land of their forebearers. They had to adopt new passports—Lebanese, Jordanian, Bahraini, Kuwaiti, Egyptian—to live a dignified life. Could you imagine that?

I don’t think any person in their right mind would condemn support for the Palestinian people as support for a terrorist group or the hate of Jewish people. I think that’s an emotional trauma response, and it would be fine if the consequences of trying to silence this side of history weren’t dire.

I will leave today with a beautiful poem by Fadwa Tuqan, a radiant Palestinian mind and poet.

Enough for Me

Enough for Me
Enough for me to die on her earth
be buried in her
to melt and vanish into her soil
then sprout forth as a flower
played with by a child from my country.
Enough for me to remain
in my country’s embrace
to be in her close as a handful of dust
a sprig of grass
a flower.

My heart goes out to all the innocent victims of this brutal occupation that’s displaced approximately 6 million people since its inception and has brainwashed a population into giving up their lives to serve a state that has no problem jeopardizing
their well-being.

Anyway, let’s get into this week’s photodump.

Stores are full of orange merchandise, pumpkin-flavored treats are taking over the pastry window at cafés across the US and the early morning breeze is slowly getting icier. It’s that time of the year when, as my elementary school teachers used to instruct us, we have to dress like an onion—in layers.

It’s also that time of the year when memories of the days spent basking in the sun on a white beach are close enough to make us squirm at the thought of our morning commute to work, but far enough that we dream of our Christmas break. 

If you are in elite circles, Invites to join your rich friends at their winter cabin are starting to roll in. Cortina D’Ampezzo if you are in Italy, Aspen if you are States-side. It’s time to put our linen dresses away and make space for cozy sweaters. Did you get your comforter cleaned? You may want to get that done ASAP. 

It’s cuffing season too! If you are not coupled up, this is the time to start looking for a cuddle partner. 

If that’s not your shtick, then gear up! Because family reunions are right around the corner, and if you are showing up unaccompanied for another year in a row, you have to be ready to catch some strays (especially if you are over 30). 

If you are a freelance contractor, an independent agency, or simply somebody who does not have a full-time job, you are most likely chasing payments for the work you did in Q3, hoping these transactions clear in time for the next round of taxes. 

No wonder people get seasonal depression around this time of the year. It’s the hardest season of the year. But at least, the wedding season is over; you may, however, start seeing pregnant bellies pop up on your timeline. 

Personally, I am about to face the nth move of my life. This time, though, it was totally my idea. There’s no ulterior motive—namely school or work opportunity—besides, hopefully, starting to mold my future into the shape I always dreamed it would look like. 

How does one overcome that sense of uncertainty that comes with packing up our belongings and closing a chapter of our life that’s served its purpose? Am I making the right choice? Am I ready for the blank page that’s opening up? Will I be able to “make it” away from the place I learned to call home for the past 5 years?
These are just a few of the many dilemmas that have constantly been buzzing in my head ahead of this endeavor. 

And it’s not like I am moving somewhere unknown, I am actually going back home. I am taking the reins of my family empire! Jk, but also am I?

I am moving into my family home, a slice of paradise in the very center of Palermo. Will I ever get commissioned work again? Who cares! I am building my own opportunities—what’s better than that?

My own transition made me reflect on moving and the temporary chaotic environment it breeds. It’s daunting, exciting…a blur. 

A friend of mine, Diane, recently gave up her very comfortable NYC life to move to Italy–she had a great job, a great apartment, and a tight-knit group of friends who supported her through her 20s, 30s, and various changes in life and careers. She chose to give all of that up because she met somebody worth the pain spawned by having to navigate an international move with no relocation agency. Nobody set her up with a nice apart-hotel or held her hand through the process (besides her soulmate obviously).

She did it to follow her heart, to find a different type of fulfillment. The type of comfortable feeling that only true love can give you. 

She’s been very open about the struggle that comes with such an undertaking—her Instagram stories are a testimony to the lessons she’s learned and the run against time (she’s currently on the quest of gathering all documents necessary to elope with her significant other so that she can stay in Europe with him.) 

When she first told me about this, I didn’t think too much of it other than feeling utmost admiration for her determination. 

Her ability to make it all seem like a beautiful romantic tale belonging to a heartwarming Hallmark classic kept me on edge like an engaged watcher at a small, independent cinema—only, I could engage with her, ask questions, and blab at the screen without being told off. 

The way she discussed her lover online is golden too; she described him as her rock, the moon to her sun, a precious gem she found on the beach after discarding a bunch of rundown rocks. He’s somebody you’d want to meet. 

I invited these lovebirds for dinner as I hadn’t seen Diane in months. We missed each other during my last period in NYC as she was prepping for the move and I was on the run for my projects. She looked so elated to be here with him, like 200 pounds had just dropped from her shoulders. Her face was glowing, a smile frozen on her face. 

In hindsight, I don’t think it’s grit that got her through the move, nor the adrenaline rush that comes from change. I realized that maybe what allowed her to keep her head above water even when there was a 2-hour long line at the Poste Italiane—or the endless Italian bureaucracy became too frustrating—was the opportunity to break down in front of her significant other if she needed to, and he’d be there to wipe her tears and promise her everything will be fine. And how beautiful is that? 

How great is it to be able to move through these quicksands we call life with a supportive significant other, or friends group? To have somebody ready to pick up where you left off, to clean up after you spill the milk? 

I can get quite introspective and philosophical when a specific life cycle ends. Each time, I gain a little more clarity on what I want in life. It happened when I graduated college and moved back to Italy from Los Angeles. It happened when I got my first job in Germany, and it happened once more when I relocated to Dubai and back to Europe. Each step marked the start of a new era; it defined a moment of regeneration and growth, the establishment of a new “boundary”. 

Not the type of boundary you put between yourself and people, but the type of brick you lay to build a stronger house. You know, to make the foundation sturdier and able to hold against any bad weather. 

If I stop and think about it, it really makes me feel powerful—like wow, I did it once again. I am sturdier, more refined, wiser. 

Settling feels warm and cozy, but it’s transitioning that helps us grow.

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Sharing Is Caring:

1. The work of Gabrielle Brown.

2. Bodies: a great book by Susie Orbach about body perception and the way media has essentially convinced us we are never good enough.

3. This interview I did with Thebe Magugu for Season Zine.

4. SeekinAmour: a beautiful new brand by two great brothers.

5. : David Eardley’s personal newsletter.

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As I grow older and I increasingly lose interest in the Meta-owned software, I thought I’d bring my old habits back.
Especially given the fact that I haven’t been writing much lately. From now on, every Saturday I will be sending out 5 images picked at random yet chronologically from the 31,776 photos I have saved on my phone.

In honor of my old blog, this series will be called Life As Nao.

Enjoy.

See you next week!

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In the first three years as an employed worked—what they consider entry-level experience nowadays—the only guidance I could rely on was the benevolence of a good-hearted colleague who had been there before or the world’s best tutor: Google. For some reason, during the most foundational period of my life in the workforce, my bosses were too busy to spend time properly training me to fit within corporate orders. Their feedback microdosed, my only chance to receive constructive criticism and ask for help was relegated to brief 1-on-1 meetings at the end of a busy week. Needless to say, the attention span of my superior was mangled at this point, so rather than going over my development as a professional, the conversation would steer in the direction of structural problems.

I was never given a toolkit for what makes a good presentation, nor was I ever handed a company-specific glossary. Introducing myself to my fellow team members was ultimately up to me and, I was ushered into each and every one of my positions with urgency, leaving little to no time for proper adaptation. The “induction” process, if we may even call it so, was as quick and painful as ripping a bandaid off a hairy arm. I was expected to immediately take on the reins of my department in fifth gear. 

Each year, I strived for more—to do more, to achieve more—and to prove my ideas were good and they would indeed generate the long-term return on investment I often heard about if only they allowed me to experiment. Little did I know, I was part of a wider machine that, if not properly oiled in all of its parts, would eventually crash and burn. No long hours or weekends at the office would alleviate foundering if my piece of the puzzle didn’t properly fit into the next department’s strategy. Success was always, and it will forever be, a matter of collaboration. 

Looking back, despite the sleepless nights and miserable days spent commiserating myself, I am grateful for having gone through such a baptism of fire when I first stepped foot into this unappreciative industry. My skin grew thicker and it made me bolder, unafraid of criticism. It provided some clarity over what I wanted out of life—or at least the type of treatment I would not acceptfrom an employer and colleagues.

I would love to say that things got better, but, whenever I accepted a job within the realm of fashion, I always ended up scorned, deceived, and drained by the experience. Whether it’s the incompetence of managers at the top, the meager wages offered, or the misuse of allocated funds, I have yet to hear about a role within a fashion company that fulfills people with a good soul. There’s just something purely evil about the fashion industry. As if only those with blood as bitter as gasoline can thrive and make it to the top. You have to be ruthless, bitchy, double-faced, and concerned with which color shoe goes better with the discounted designer dress bought at a sample sale than a person’s well-being. Ok not everybody is like this, but it is many people.

This leads me to a disgraced situation I found myself in recently. A few months back, after promising myself I would never deal with clients coming from that devilish business, I made the deadly mistake of accepting a consulting role with a brand that reached out to inquire about my services.

I will spare you the anxiety-inducing details, but, long story short, I have been battling with my payment for the past 2 months, and the whole ordeal has really left me empty, demotivated, and disheartened about work at large.

On the bright side (there’s always a bright side), as someone who is in the process of building not one, but two companies after continuously failing to commit to full-time self-employment over and over, this nightmare left me with a few great takeaways in expectation and people management.

Moreover, I learned how important it is to distance yourself from the negotiation process if you are also the person who is going to carry out the scope of work. Unfortunately, when working freelance, this is often not an option as we are a one-man show. 

Another crucial factor that I learned the hard way is having a lawyer handy whenever a dispute arises. 
An attorney will be able to suggest what’s the best route to take when things get tricky with a client, and if needed, they will step in to resolve the issue on your behalf, employing the kind of jargon that will help you set the record straight. I know lawyers can be costly, so try to make friends with some law students! Jk, but trust me, having an attorney on your side is very productive, essential even. 

At the beginning of any type of collaboration, if the commissioner does not provide a proper brief for the work, ask for it. Ask the point of contact to send you a very clearly defined scope of work, if they prefer you come up with it, then demand that they sign it promptly. Then demand a contract and make it very clear that you will not start working until the agreement is signed, filed, and archived in the right jurisdiction. You need to protect yourself and your work as much as you can because when things go left, malicious clients will try to gaslight you into thinking you are not good enough, instead of taking account of their mistakes and inadequacy. 

It’s hard not to back down and accept whatever crumbs they try to throw at you because the process of fighting for what you deserve is exhausting, however, it’s important to continue standing up for ourselves whenever we can afford to. It’s a matter of solidarity for those who cannot do it, as well as the right thing to do in terms of self-respect. 

Not sure why the fashion industry is such a scam but if you are an aspiring fashion-anything reading this rant today, please, I beg you, learn how to deal with contracts and make the best out of any experience and job. Add fines to late payments, record every piece of communication.

Obviously with experience comes the confidence to stand up for yourself, but it’s also a matter of learning how to sieve through the bullshit. Good clients–employers and collaborators—will set you up for success, not tear you down on the first hindrance.

Worse come to worse, change industry. I cannot say that other fields are a walk in the park, but so far, startups have not let me down.

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In other news, one of my babies is soft-launching this weekend in New York!

systemarosa is a first-of-its-kind platform bridging football and fashion through a distinctive female-centric lens. 

Founded in 2023, systemarosa is an interdisciplinary venture born from my and my partner’s need to express our love for vintage, football style, and the game at large.
Crossing the boundaries of traditional football fashion and vintage style, we merge commerce and research, offering an ever-growing, curated collection of archival garments, carefully sourced from Europe and the US.
Additionally, we provide editorial inspiration and community events aimed at fostering an inclusive atmosphere. 

Please RSVP!

Sharing is caring:

1. This podcast my dear friend Samantha shared with me.

2. This beautiful dress by Tigra Tigra.

3. This delicious kombucha (or fermented tea?), made in Greenpoint NY!

4. This movie about Poppie Nongena, a houseworker and resilient Afrikaans-speaking isiXhosa mother.

It’s been a long, restless summer. Unlike the rest of my compatriots, I did not spend August parlaying on a white beach, soaking my feet in the crystal clear waters of the Mediterranean Sea. Instead, I spent the hottest months of the year working on mentally straining commissions to fund the digital grand opening of Nonsense and gathering material for our editorial segment. It was fun and exciting, but tiring as well. I didn’t really get to have a break and that may be why there are days when I feel like I should just give up. Additionally, in August I turned 32 which isn’t as important as 30 or 33 but it felt like a big milestone nonetheless. 

On the very day of my birthday, instead of kicking my feet up and letting others pamper me, I sat at a desk with my software engineering partner and I released RISERVE, a global index of football-inspired creative talent.

This directory had been on the backburner of my mind for quite some time before I was finally able to make it happen. For months, I had been interrogating myself about what it could look like. I have a big network in the sports category and I wanted to use my access to help others while shaking the field up a bit. Initially, I thought I could maybe compile the list myself. Very quickly I realized that wasn’t feasible. My contact book is too hefty and my memory too weak to draft an exhaustive list worth putting out. Therefore I decided I had to start modestly and crowdsource the entries by simply sharing a Google Sheet link on my social media and asking people to fill it in with their information. In under two weeks, it got to more than 250 items. Wow! People were really eager to get off the bench! 

The thought of turning this humble file into a nicely designed website started buzzing in my ears. What if it could be as beautiful as useful? What if it could turn into a real networking platform? A job board? A space for community? My mind began wandering at 200km/h.
I sat down and slowed my roll, reminding myself to take one step at a time—I can’t jumpstart a Ferrari on the fourth gear. I would burn the engine.
I pulled out my notes and went back to the brainstorming session from when the idea first popped up, months before. 

Committed to practicing what I preach, I scrolled down the list and enlisted Pilar O’Connor, a phenomenal art director (who, by the way, also has a very cute brand called Sucka Free Certified–check it out) with a background in sports to help me design the logo and interface. Then, I turned inward for the actual development of the website, which was carried out by my team at Nonsense Projects. 

The first version is quite simple, however, the plan is to continuously improve it until it becomes the go-to platform for both creatives and companies (brands, clubs, institutions) to find gigs and new talent. So far, it’s helped many fellow artists-marketers-writers get jobs and that’s all that matters to me at this point because that’s the soul of the project. 

In total, RISERVE took about one year to manifest. It was a labor of love and passion and it really needed to brew and simmer to come to life the way I intended it to.
Aside from this newsletter, it’s the first project I managed from inception to delivery without incurring any major hurdles (besides continuously reminding myself to get out of my own way.) It felt good. 

Moreover, it taught me a valuable lesson: Good things truly come to those who wait—not in a prophetic way, but rather in a philosophical manner.
Acting on an idea after properly evaluating it and strategizing the outcome provides a much deeper feeling of satisfaction, as you have had the time to really savor the meaning behind it.
After all, the Sistine Chapel took 4 years to finish and it is one of the most acclaimed masterpieces to exist. Every day, even after hundreds of years, the necks of hundreds of thousands of tourists are jeopardized by its beauty.

This concept could be applied to literally any project, especially the ones I am currently laying the groundwork for.
They have been in the making for YEARS—since before they were even an idea floating in my brain. Everything I have done can be looked at as a drop in the ocean of knowledge that led me to seek out endeavors of my own. Experience after experience, I gathered insights and skills, absorbed wisdom from others, and extracted what I deemed most necessary for the future of my practice. Not too long ago, I learned that the lengthy process behind making something happen can be identified as ‘creative gestation’.

GESTATION: 

1. the process or period of developing inside the womb between conception and birth.

2. the development of something over a period of time.

Personal projects, especially in the creative field, are often described with terms that come from procreation.
It isn’t rare to hear someone say: “This piece of work is my baby”, “I am pregnant with ideas”, “It’s a fertile mind” and so on.
Artists (using this as a wide-range term) are as protective of their ideas as they are of their children. But then, why are we expected (and in turn, expect ourselves) to churn out work as fast as McDonald’s? Where does the motherly love for good, well-thought craft go?

These ruminations started to beget after participating in a round table conversation about surviving the patriarchy as a woman in the creative field, specifically in the context of today’s world. It was a breezy night at the beginning of May and the talk panel was part of the programming Ilaria Bianchi curated for the launch of Temperanza, her latest personal endeavor, at Riviera in Milan. 

Initially, I was quite reluctant to agree as I am not a fan of discussing contentious topics in public and/or under a specific time constraint (we only had 1h and five different guests were on the stand). Intricate subjects, especially in this era, deserve to be unraveled without the risk of having to cut off a speaker half sentence—God forbid somebody in the audience captures the wrong part of the speech and posts it to their TikTok. Cancel culture is one decontextualized snippet away. Still, something told me to welcome the invitation and propose my work in women’s football as my contribution to the cause. 

To my pleasant surprise, the dialogue—which sounded more intimidating on paper than in real life—steered away from pure feminist discourse and concentrated on the subject of creativity and creative execution as a female human in a commodified industry.

The central argument focused on capitalism rather than gender rhetoric and, as a result, I was able to walk away from the event with a few interesting takeaways (and a delicious limited edition bottle of rosé picked by Ilaria herself) on creative exploitation without coming off as too much of a contrarian. 

During the informal chat, after each one of the participants was invited to a monologue about their “art” by the moderator, the session began shifting toward a more specific train of thought related to the items that were lying all around us. Pointing to the laden table at the center of the room, Ilaria explained how she first came up with the concept for her illustrated pottery and artworks and the two-year-long interlude between idea and execution. She called it creative gestation—or, as mentioned above, the period required to transform a creative idea into a tangible product. 

Creative gestation is an important “something” that I find myself returning to whenever a new idea lights up in my brain. I know what the end result should look like, I know what steps I should be taking but, often, the journey to delivery ends up being rockier than I expected. Just like Michelangelo’s most famous painting, I suppose that’s why it took six centuries to complete Milan’s Duomo and the Sagrada Familia is yet to be finished.

Nonetheless, these monuments are so stunning and majestic that nobody ever criticizes the amount of time it took to complete them. Great things take time and sometimes we don’t even have the tools necessary to plant that first seed, so how can we expect it to sprout the next day? 

The fastness with which we are expected to manufacture our ideas into commodities is unsustainable. Very few things we regard as valuable, impactful, and life-changing came out of the oven in perfect shape in seconds. Not even something as simple as pizza. Delicious, digestible pizza is made overnight—the dough needs to rest and rise, and then after 24 hours of fermentation, it’s ready to be baked. The baking, in this instance, requires only a few minutes, however, the oven has to be fired up and heated for quite a while. If the temperature isn’t right—hell-grade hot—the dough won’t react well. 

Ultimately, extracting a creative idea from our mind and assembling it into a physical object, experience, or business from scratch looks more like an aimless journey than a straightforward path. Too many factors need to be taken into consideration: Where are we in our personal and professional lives, our knowledge about what we are trying to do, the funds we have to make it happen, and our commitment to the end result. What is our plan once the project is ready to be launched?

I feel, at least from personal experience, that the anxiety and sense of inadequacy that comes with trying to create “stuff” would be less crippling if I began looking at whatever I am trying to make through the eyes of pregnancy. I wouldn’t rush to push a baby out, would I? Matter of fact, that’s something doctors advise against.

For a pregnancy to be successful, you need to pay attention, be careful, and accept whatever sensation or symptom is part of the journey. Multiple check-ins are needed: Tests, trials, and even prenatal exercises are favored. There’s no one-size-fits-all path to delivering a baby. It’s your own personal trip. The same goes for ideas. 

After being conceived, they need to marinate in our heads, loom, and get taken care of before one day, all of a sudden, they are ready to pop and come out to the world. When creating in today’s day and age, we often don’t have the luxury of free time. Time away from concerns, bills, people, and family commitments.

Sometimes, the idea needs to ripen before it can reach the manufacturing stage. Multiple factors can hinder the process and falter the progress, but we should not look at these pauses as discouragement. We should acknowledge these hiatuses as necessary pitstops that can help us fuel us further.

With that said, as you may have noticed, I have had to temporarily press pause on “My Father’s Project”, my attempt to write a book in public which doubled as the paid segment of this newsletter.

It turns out that writing my father’s biography requires more time and research than expected and I currently do not have the bandwidth to make it happen as fast as I wanted to.
As this is probably the only book I will ever author, I am shooting for the stars in terms of excellence—obviously, I also want to honor him. 

While I initially self-flagellated, I have come to terms with the fact that this is a long-term endeavor and it doesn’t really matter if it takes two, five, or ten years as long as I keep working at it amid everything else.

For those who paid to read, I appreciate you believing in me. For those who are here regardless of what and when I write, thank you for continuously showing up even if the flow of my weekly letters has been disrupted. It will continue being at random for the foreseeable future, but I promise, I will do my best to always send some useful messages. 

See you next time! 

Sharing is caring:

1. I recently found out about by Daniel Giacopelli, Ex Editorial Director of Courier Media, now at Mailchimp,and it’s such an amazing newsletter I keep going back to it.

2. by Emily Hubbard just released some new merch that I really, truly liked. You should check it out.

3. This video made me cry, so now you have to watch it too.

4. As a part-time resident of NYC, I have been trying to get into the groove of the city by learning more about the neighborhoods I visit the most due to friends and things as such. This article from the Gothamist gives an insight into how Airbnb is “destroying” certain areas like Bed-Stuy (one of the hippest districts in the city.) Good stuff.

5. As a freelance worker-turned co-founder of a service agency, I have been dealing with horrible payment terms for quite a while now. Yesterday I decided to look into the origin of net-30 (the most common payment scheme) and, you guessed it! It’s super outdated.
   

I am not sure why or how this came to be, there was nothing that urgent in my 9-5 era (even less in my independent contractor renaissance) but the pulsion was so strong, it became an unconscious standard practice that sticks with me to this day with no boss to micromanage my tasks and no team to deal with.

The indebtment to the corporate ecosystem is gone, but the anxiety to miss a potentially breakthrough message stayed.

Realistically most of the emails I get daily are not that critical—especially those I receive overnight. 

Matter of fact, nearly all of the material clogging up my Gmail is spam: Brand newsletters I never came around to unsubscribe from and other useless crap that would better fit the junk section.

Still, despite knowing damn well that digital correspondence is not what I should feed my brain at 6:30 AM, I am compelled to maniacally refresh my email app whenever my phone is around. And, given that my iPhone doubles as my alarm clock and I work “remotely”, that’s quite literally 24h/day.

This addictive disorder has subdued my craving for social media interaction—I dutifully turned off my IG notifications as soon as that was an option—even if I blocked emails from pinging or popping up on my screen. 

Simply knowing there may be emails to be read makes me anxious. The higher the number, the worse I feel. Email notifications rule me. That’s a scary thought.

I am not alone in feeling this way as when I typed “email anxiety” in my browser an astounding 657,000,000 results showed up. 

So what is email anxiety? 

According to psychcentral.com—a website dedicated to mental health—email anxiety encompasses a variety of symptoms spanning fear, panic, catastrophizing and negative thoughts, racing heartbeat, shallow and rapid breathing, hot flashes, sweating, dizziness and nausea and it affects quite a few workers. 

Thankfully, I have yet to throw up or experience tachycardia but I have gone through the more covert signs—emails make me feel burned out. And given the fact that my job is 70% emailing and 30% of actual doing…that’s really bad.

Emails, unlike text messages, should technically feel less pressing. Even if a colleague emails you at 3 AM, an immediate answer is not expected. Still, in my opinion, there is a massive difference between getting a text in the middle of the night and waking up to find somebody sent an email at midnight. The former feels cute, the latter is a trigger. 

Maybe it’s because I don’t have that many people texting me daily, or maybe it’s because I successfully kept work conversations off my iMessage and Whatsapp, but any other type of communication feels heavy. 

I was never the type of person to want two phones, one for personal and one for professional reasons, as it felt unnecessary but it’s become clear that to live a more tranquil life, I need to restrict my digital footprint even more. I just want to disengage completely from any type of work-related anything after hours. I don’t want to talk about work, I don’t want to hear others speak of work and I don’t want to feel enslaved by my devices. 

As somebody who considers my work as a natural extension of who I am, the decision is quite radical but it’s a mandatory step to keep my sanity.

Disconnecting is medicine at this point. I even thought about picking one day a week to check and answer emails, but how realistic is that as deadlines get tighter and so do budgets? One missed email can feel like a huge faux pas. 

This, plus the fact that I made it a rule to answer everybody who emails me even if it’s not relevant or I cannot help them, is starting to catch up—there are days when I just want to throw my laptop out of the window. 

Maybe it’s not the emails per se that stress me out. Maybe the venom sprinkles from the quality of the emails. Most of the time, it’s people requesting to jump on a call. On a call for what?! 

Can’t they just tell me what they want right here, right now? Isn’t that the purpose of emailing anyways? 

Sweet, straightforward and concise. That’s what we, the workers, need in life: less useless communication, more action.

Actually, now that I took the time to think about it, emails are not the problem. I love to receive emails from people who want to show me their work, talk REAL business, ask for advice or begin an epistolary friendship. 

Hell! I even love to send emails when I know I can take my time to think about the answer and build out my own delivery timeline. 

The real issue is, perhaps, the content of the email and the pressure the sender passive-aggressively weaves into the message. Possibly, the anxiety stems from the knowledge that 9 out of 10 times, the text will not bear exciting news–rather, a reason to be contentious, financially disrespected, or denied a request that took time and courage to submit. 

This is my reality as a creative worker—even with 10 years of experience on my back, I still have to put up the right boundaries to protect myself from burnout and professional strain (which, by the way, sounds like an additional task for my never-ending to-do list). So much for work-life balance. 

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In other—better—news! In celebration of the Women’s World Cup, I am teaming up with Football Café to bring FOOTBALL & CHILL to New York City! If you are in town, I’d love to see it this Saturday, August 5th, at 141 Chrystie Street from 4 PM until late. 

We will have a FREE nail bar run by Tagliente Nails, where you can get a nail design (or two) done in support of your team / the game. A beaaaautiful photo exhibition with the work of an amazing roster of international artists, music and of course the game! Come on down!

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Don’t have anything to suggest this week! But here’s a nice jingle to keep you going!

In life, we are constantly pressured into conformity by the system, the media, and society. Standing above the crowd is discouraged for many reasons: The amalgamation of the masses makes it easier to maneuver our wants and needs. But conformity, in my opinion, is more like a side effect—a consequence of our constant need to compare ourselves to others and feeling inadequate when we don’t reach the same “success”. Yet, the possibility of doing stuff precisely like the next person is almost impossible because each one of us is genetically unique. No two people, except for twins, of course, share the same DNA.

While I am sure comparison is a condition that’s affected humankind since we swam out of the primordial broth and put our legs to use—don’t quote me on that, I haven’t done enough research—the advent and explosion of social media has exacerbated this phenomenon and sent us into an even deeper oblivion.

On any given day, we are exposed to a plethora of “content” that subconsciously rewires our brain into thinking other people are living better than us, are doing better than us, are more famous than us, and have a better chance at life than us. Even if we know these platforms only show staged parts of these strangers’ existence, if we don’t stop and think, it’s easy to succumb to a sour feeling of jealousy. It happens to the best of us.

In my career I have had the luck to mentor quite a few young creatives and their number one preoccupation seemed to unanimously be feeling so extremely behind compared to their peers.
Given their tender age (early 20s), this came as a surprise; some of them had yet to graduate from university.
I was dumbfounded by their bleak perspective. Not that I have never felt this way, but I saw them as such promising young talents, it pained me to hear their dilemma.

Initially, I didn’t know what to tell them besides “Stop looking at what others do. They are not you.”

Then I started to reflect on the topic and quickly realized it’s extremely hard not to cave into comparison and my cheap, obvious advice wasn’t going to help them.

So I began testing myself. Whenever I caught myself asking how did that person afford to take 2 months off to travel in an exotic country while I sat miserably on my couch working my ass off, I forced myself to refocus my thoughts on my own journey.

Objectively, my life is very enviable. In less than 3 full decades, I lived in 10 different cities, in 5 different countries on 3 different continents (or 4? Are Indonesia and the UAE both in Asia? I think so).

I earned lots of miles, achieved some great milestones, and even became a homeowner at the age of 27. I absolutely should not think others have it better than me.
I have lived a fairly privileged life: I never had a summer job, I spent my high school summers between Sicily and Orange County, and I had 100 Barbie dolls at some point in life. I should be counting my blessings daily. Yet, I continuously find a new reason to think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence because the system is literally designed to make me feel less than at any given chance.

For example, when I first signed up for Substack, I had no idea I could even make it this far. I simply wanted to make space for my thoughts instead of yelling them out on social media. In less than 2 years, I broke 1000 subscribers. That’s a relatively huge achievement for somebody who’s never dedicated her life to writing full-time. Still, I spent my time stressing over how so few people upgraded their subscription to paid when I turned it on.

For weeks, instead of focusing on doing my best work, I researched the best-performing newsletters and wasted days trying to figure out what they had that I didn’t. The more I read, the sillier I felt.

I knew the quality of my writing was just as good, if not better. The topics were definitely better, more relatable, and more inspirational than writing about celebrity gossip and pop culture. So why were they living off their writing and I wasn’t?

Well, first of all, I am not writing full-time. Writing has become a consistent practice in my life only in 2021.

I was never a full-time staff writer anywhere. My career has taken many turns and cut corners to different destinations before I could even figure out what I liked to do and what I was good at, while these people had been writing for at least a decade, bringing their audience from their previous editor roles with them to the platform.
Secondly, the platform itself endorsed them. Last but not least, they shamelessly promoted themselves across platforms (where they already had a huge following)—something that I am only partially ok with doing without feeling like a clown.
So why was I comparing myself to them? Our journey and goals in life were completely different. And it’s not like I didn’t have my share of accomplishments myself.

After all, I did make money from my writing. There’s a stack of magazines on the floor of my living room that prove my status as a writer. And they are in print! The most prestigious goal for any writer that’s ever dreamed of calling themselves such a title. I am pretty sure only a few of the people with a successful newsletter (at least the ones I saw) can boast the same.

So what’s the antidote for comparison? Well, I am tempted to say staying off social media and giving up your tv, but I know that’s often not possible. This software is embedded in our life and if you want to profit from your creativity you are basically forced to make the best out of it—at least in my generation.

When this sentiment arises, take some time to look at how far you’ve come and focus on the path that’s ahead of you. Enfants prodiges always existed, but it’s a very small percentage of the population. Most people reach their peak in their late 30s and 40s. Your journey is uniquely yours. Life is a marathon, not a sprint.

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1. If you haven’t seen, I was part of Inter FC’s kit release campaign—yes, I’m hyping myself up!

2. The Women’s World Cup kicked off last week, please tune in and watch! If you are a first-timer, got you covered in her last newsletter.

3. If you are in NYC and want to watch the games in good company, check out this document by Zoe Allen and subscribe to her newsletter .

4. Room Studio provided us with the best kit release of the year.

5. Snoh Aalegra blessed us with a sweet summer hit.

   
   

Every time I open my laptop to write my newsletter, I am immediately taken over by a sense of inadequacy that subtly pushes me to vomit a pity party on paper. It’s an odd, sticky feeling that causes me to be redundant and to over-apologize for my shortcomings as if the few months I turned on paid subscriptions (with little luck I must say) forever indebted me to my audience. 

It’s a sensation that is hard to shake off, especially because it’s not guilt or contempt; I could deal with those. I am quite responsible when it comes to living up to self-imposed standards. So it must be much deeper—a formula of disgust and apprehension, anxiety if you will. It’s nostalgia for what could have been, and loathing for what’s not there. 

All of these thoughts are very abstract and transitory—one minute they exist, and the next they are gone, swept away by new preoccupations about work, life, and whatever else.

Despite their intangible essence, they obfuscate my brain and cripple me for a quick second whenever I set out on the quest to keep up with my literary work.
I feel as if a bleak complaint is the only confutation I can produce when, really, my aim is to spread food for thought.
As you can see, I overcompensate by employing erudite language that’s also quite obnoxious and elevated for no reason. 

I have often asked myself if I am entering my Poète Maudite era (without the self-destruction part, no self-medication is involved) or if it’s more of a literary Dark Age prompted by the hectic schedule I have been on since April.
I can only hope for the latter given what historically came after (the Renaissance, if you skipped history class).
Perhaps, all of the above is simply unnecessary mental gymnastics to justify a not-so-prolific season of my life and help me get through the weeks when there are no thoughts to be shared and events to comment on. 

On the upside, my ability to embellish words and bend them to fit my needs is the reason why I have so often been tapped into for artist statements and exhibition texts by friends and acquaintances looking to revamp the way they present themselves and their projects to the world. Their satisfaction is my bliss in that case; I am a wordsmith at their service using my tools to prop them up and exalt their talent.
Matter of fact, those are the commissions that inspire my essays because that’s when I get direct feedback and critique or compliments on how well I interpreted their work. 

And to be of service to someone in need is the best possible thing that could happen to a person, or at least I think so. 

In one of my most recent art dwellings, I was tasked with exploiting the concept of “POST–” as in what’s to behind and what’s to come for POST ACTION, an exhibition by Federico Paviani and Joshua Althaus. 

The project pondered the feeling of never being on time that is so prevalent in today’s society by using destitute billboards and road signs as inspiration—a very abstruse metaphor that one could only understand if aided by a text. 

The assignment led me to think deeply about time, as I needed to contextualize the installation for the audience and interpret the feeling that the artists wanted to convey with the artwork itself. 

Time is a heavily stressed and misused word in our culture.
It’s seen as a constraint rather than an opportunity. We are constantly trying to tame it, stop it, reverse it. There’s never enough—we are always chasing it, trying to grasp and stretch every minute we have at our disposal, causing the exact opposite to happen. 

By pursuing “what’s next”, we forget to savor the now, feeding that perpetual sense of deficiency that is the human condition.

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Here’s what I wrote for the show:

THE MOMENT AFTER.

Exacerbated by the advent of the digital era, a constant feeling of incompletion and inadequacy afflicts humans at every stage of life. Unlike the other animals inhabiting this world—our existence is defined by an abstruse, abstract, and self-inflicted concept that, for our natural inclination to define and label things, we decided to call time.

Time is inescapable. It dictates our every move. It’s a God-like entity: invisible, intangible, tasteless. It doesn’t smell, it doesn’t make a sound, and it cannot physically hold us back or push us forward. Still, its presence is ubiquitous. It causes us to lie to ourselves and others; it has the power to crush our spirit or uplift us. 

There’s never an abundance of time. Conversely, we can never have enough. We drive ourselves into the ground desperately trying to gain access to more. We blame our personal shortcomings on the lack thereof. 

Time is such an important feature in our lives that, from a very young age, we are taught how to handle it to forego future mismanagement.
In reality, time rules us. So much so that those living at the margins of this ethereal yet finite commodity are ostracized and looked down upon. We call them outcasts or drifters, we question their sanity.
Secretly envious of their freedom, we act disgusted by them to make ourselves feel important.

We think we can tame time by attributing fabricated figures to it and constricting them to little objects made of the most disparate materials. Our ancestors built towers so that people could know what time it is at every hour. Furthermore, it became a religious predicament with bells ringing on the dot. Time is so valuable, we spend thousands–sometimes hundreds of thousands–to wear it on our wrists as a sign of affluence. 

We strive for punctuality as tardiness is an offense, a trait not to aspire to. We praise Northern countries for their reliability and judge Southerners for their nonchalance. 

But in its true essence, time has no shape–it’s priceless. It’s a game between the sun and the moon, an endless carousel of Mother Earth. It’s pure physics. It’s a harmonious dance between light and darkness, winter and summer. It’s the natural cycle of life.

It is no coincidence that endless revered authors and thinkers have pontificated upon the essence of time and its relation to the human condition. Most notably, Samuel Beckett in his famed tragicomedy “Waiting For Godot”. 

The play is often interpreted as an allegory for the human condition, with Godot representing an elusive goal or purpose that we all seek but never seem to find. Beckett raises questions about the nature of existence, the meaning of life the never-ending pursuit of something greater than ourselves. 

POST ACTION muses upon similar concepts by inviting people to take part in an immersive journey where movement is physically stifled and, at times, interrupted by imposing structures. These artifacts represent that sense of heaviness and strife that torments all of us–a feeling hard to shake off as we continuously live in function of what’s next. 

The audience is purposefully made uncomfortable to mimic the empty moment in between what has just finished and what’s to come next. The artists seek to represent idleness through metallic installations modeled after destitute billboards and exaggerated imperative signs. What’s the guest to do? Start, stop, or go? 

The interpretation of the placards is left to the guests themselves as they become ingrained into the exhibition and take on the role of active participants. As they walk through the obstacles and engage with the different rooms, they are enshrined in a nostalgic atmosphere. They become the abstraction of the “after” as they stand behind the signage, and walk past the message, but they are never in front or ahead. They embody the sense of bleak awareness that comes from understanding what has occurred or what’s in front without ever being able to reach it.

The stroll across the rooms itself embodies the message behind POST ACTION.

Share Things I Thought About by Naomi Accardi

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1. Kristal Trotter, founder of ACCENTO, has launched her own Substack and it’s great!

2. Somebody has finally managed to dress footballers well and it’s Marks & Spencer!

3. I am not big on skincare treatments but I am dying to try Raquel New York.

4. The Stroll, a HBO documentary about trans prostitutes in the Meat Packing District.

5. This video about aimless creativity.