"Have you changed?" Yes. I have changed. I learned to leave behind. Not easy, eh. But I realized that at some point you have to move forward and attack the future to have at least one present. Now that the end of another year is behind us – this convention that men give themselves to try to draw margins to something that has none, the passage of time – I am free to draw the usual personal balance. There's so much in my 2022 that I wouldn't know where to start. Let's go with order. The pain. An essential element for us human beings, both when we look for it for trivial reasons and when we are overwhelmed without having asked for it. I would have gladly avoided the pain of this year, it goes without saying. And yet there was. Huge and with the discreet company of his cousins, anxiety and fear, which have marked most of these twelve months. Yet, even in pain, we can find the answers we have been looking for for a long time. Develop ideas. Take the run-up for a nice dip in the unknown. The fear of losing what you love can make you crazy, they say. Well, in some ways it did. If on the one hand my body has not withstood the impact of this pain, presenting me with a salty bill that is still to be deciphered, the mind has reacted in a more than positive way. He learned to live with the cheerful clique of ruthless cousins, and at a certain point – when the container of human endurance became saturated – he threw out the revolution. In March, I said to myself, "Enough! It's now or never." The idea was simple, however complex to implement: leave a part of your work and embark on new adventures.

Voyager probes and living spaces

Often the best situations are born like this, daughters of guns pointed at the temple. I have always loved the job of journalist, and in part it is still so, but I no longer (re)mirror myself as twenty or ten years ago. I no longer have that "sacred fire" we debated with colleagues in our youth, and the world has not only changed, it has traveled a distance from the Voyager 2 probe… It is permissible to chase numbers, objectives, turnovers. All right. But in the end I felt the need for something truly "mine", where there were no third parties or requests to satisfy, a space where I could be completely free (professional). This is how the workshops of writer's creativity were born, something that had always been in my ropes that had not yet come out to claim its space. There, at that very moment, they were born. From a sketchy idea, a bit smoky, the proposal of writer's creativity arose. First a couple of "rehearsal" evenings, then a real recreational-cultural offer. I tell the truth: almost no one believed it. I will always be grateful to one person in particular who encouraged me and helped me leave. Then, however, I gained confidence and felt more and more comfortable on my legs alone. The smoke has dispersed and everything has become increasingly clear, a work path that started well that I intend to grow during 2023, so as to transform it into an important asset of my professional activity. Also in March I decided to focus a lot on a videomaker's project in which to tell particular stories and characters, worthy of note or to be brought back into vogue. That too is growing, even that in 2023 will have to make a further leap in quality. 2022, which in continuation with 2021 has sanctioned the birth of a resolute and determined Stefano to take the leap, has also seen the detachment of important people. Which I thought was important. For which I thought I was important. Life often offers unexpected junctions: it's all about trying not to be attacked. You can risk losing someone for reasons you can't counter, you can lose someone for much more earthly reasons where you're cause, cause, consequence, or who knows what. After all, it's just a matter of learning to navigate through all this pain, riding it like on a surfboard. It is useless to try to cross it to the end, now I know that there is no end, there is no safe port to reach. You have to surf. And I didn't just learn how to do it. I did it right. So happy new year and good surfing.