10 days ago, my wife (Nikki), cat (Walter), and I landed in Rome for a semi-permanent stay. The last 10 years were spent grinding away at the American dream, and shortly into that grind, we started making plans for escape; me from the Bay Area tech world, and Nik from the far more meaningful/stressful world of nursing. We concocted this idea that we might come here for 6 months after this goal or that milestone. Possibly we would save up vacation time, then, possibly we would go on a hiatus from our jobs. In the end, we sold our house and a lot of our stuff, and put the rest into storage. We saved our money and quit our jobs, and just moved here.

So what am I doing? I’ll answer that question many times over the next year, but I’ll start with what I’m doing here, writing about myself.

I told myself that, without a job and not much structure to my life in Rome, I would spend time writing. I have kept a sporadic journal over the last 10 years, and I thought keeping one specifically about my time spent here would be a wonderful record to someday look back on. Also, journaling has, in the past, helped me untangle personal strife and cooled my spiraling temper.

Mostly, though, I have to admit that I’m keeping a public journal because I want other people to enjoy reading it, which, in turn, feeds my ego.

It could possibly help with the untethered feeling I’m experiencing, leaving my friends and family behind in the States, and to start, I think that’s who I will be writing for. And for me… and possibly strangers. I don’t know yet.

I will try and keep this as a record of my sincere thoughts and observations about life here without being disgusting. I really don’t know how this substack will morph over time and whether it will become a burden for me. Or if the act of writing down polished versions of experiences will diminish my actual experience of those events. Or if my writing will be boring or pompous. I hope to keep this interesting and relatively raw without ruining all chances of being employed again.

A disclaimer:

I have a deep misanthropic vein running through me. I tend to love the individual and the culture, but despise the crowd around me. It is probably a defense mechanism created by my 13-year-old self, but in reality, I don’t care and have little interest in changing this part of myself. I say this because as I reread some of my journal over the last 10 days I sometimes sound like a real bitch. I don’t actually know why I’m disclaiming this other than to let you know that I know that I sound like that.

A second disclaimer:

It is possible that the documenting of interactions with the people I meet here in Rome may eventually be read by those people. Because of the first disclaimer, a lot of my recounts and descriptions (of you, if you recognize yourself in this writing) may come off as biting or possibly even hostile. For that, I am sorry. I want to assure you that, except in cases where I explicitly state otherwise, I like/love you and I wrote about you because I find you enchanting. Your quirky and unflattering qualities are just more interesting than your kindness and patience, which, if you are still my friend, you must have in spades.

Lastly, thank you for taking the time to read my blog. I hope you grant me the grace that I seldom grant others and find it enchanting.

Do you see the wonderful stranger who elevated this photo? I love him.