There was a time when Monday was my favorite day.
Seriously, M O N D A Y.
I was in my first year at Law School and I was spending at least 2 hours on a train on a daily basis. I was reading. A LOT.
I also watched loads of TV Shows and most of them — in the pre-Netflix era - were airing on US and British networks.
Sunday nights — Monday mornings in Italy — were like El Dorado. Mad men, Breaking bad, The Good Wife were just a few shows breaking the grounds of TV writing on a weekly basis.
I’m not a nostalgic.
I’m pretty happy with the evolution we got. I like binge-watching. I probably like the fast-everything consumerism more than I would like to say out loud.
But I do miss Mondays.
I do miss knowing it’s Monday or Tuesday or Friday — TGIF — and not just another staying-at-home day fighting the Coronavirus outbreak.
What strikes me the most is that all these things are something I can do, even right now.
I cannot listen to live music. I cannot go the theatre or fly to Spain and admire Guernica for a couple of hours. I cannot just go out and have three rounds of Spritz with my friends.
I can still watch TV shows, listen to music, read.
In some ways, I do still get access to art.
But it doesn’t feel the same.
I don’t feel the same.
My name is Giulia.
Apparently, I’m 31 years old.
I’m not really sure that’s the time I spent on heart, actually.
In the last couple of months, it seemed like I never lived. Not enough.
It also seemed like I’m getting old. In an heavy and distressing kind of way.
That hit me hard on the first lockdown we experienced in Italy.
I always wanted to write.
And I always prevented myself from doing it.
Like any form of art, writing requires skills that goes beyond studying.
I strongly believe in studying. I love studying. I even got a PhD, for God’s sake.
But I always felt like the only thing that can really break me is trying at something I could be horrible at, even if I studied a lot.
I don’t feel that way about law. Law is about problems. I’m fantastic at having problems and I try to be good at solving them.
In Italy, we’re on our way to a second lockdown. Mild, in some regions, stronger on others. Still, making life a matter of working and breathing the air outside your window under a mask and alone.
My name is Giulia.
I’m a lawyer.
And a postdoc researcher.
And I’ve been a fashion stylist. Choosing outfits for adv and short movies.
And an event manager, dealing with the artists I admired for years.
And a translator. For those logos — like Netflix or Disney — I’ve been seeing for so long on opening credits.
I’ve tried an enormous amount of things, always concealing that the one I wanted the most in my life was writing. About no specific thing — so about stuff no one would really care about, not in 2020.
In the past days, I started thinking that probably 2020 is the year when we could care. We could care about how people feels. We should care and talk about arts, politics, mental health, feelings.
Getting to 2021 or getting to whatever year could be better than this one is all about caring.
It is about caring that any problem a human being feels like a problem is a problem. And it needs to be addressed and solved. It is about caring of how politics is losing sight on what matters to people.
Here is me, trying to get to 2021 without losing it.
Without losing sight of what makes our lives different from animals or robots.
Connections, feelings, awe.
Here is me with a wish to share my caring about anything that makes me feel human.
Welcome to my mind.
Please, mind the gap.
