not a reader? hear two fake ai podcasters talk about this travel journal (i just had to play with google’s notebooklm haha).

https://blossom.primal.net/2ecfbdb05cd04d5888e448c30dd91c5b763cc14a7b6eafa0981f5c239adfbc07.mp3

THE OVERBUILT LIFE

i didn’t go to italy to find myself. i went because something felt kind of off. not really broken, per se… just… off.

i have a fantastic life. great family, great friends. work is good. i’m loaded up with probably too many hobbies. im in the best shape i have probably ever been in. things look solid from the outside. but there has been this low-level noise underneath everything — like i was moving forward, but not actually going anywhere.

so i left. not forever, but long enough to see what happened if i removed the usual stuff: routine, comfort, people who already knew me, the version of myself that had been on easy repeat. i told myself it was about cooking and learning — and it was — but that wasn’t really the point. 

first thing first, people have asked me, ‘why italy? why cooking school?’ last year i spent a long time looking for somewhere to move to for a month, to break my routines, and to learn something new wherever i ended up. i found immersive programs in metal blade work in norway, leatherwork (belts, bags, shoes) in florence, landscape photography in australia, oil portrait painting in florence, building boats in sweden, distilling whisky in scotland… dozens of options, but culinary school in calabria felt like it would most benefit my everyday life. and, well, italy is amazing and swoons my romantic heart.

upon post-travel reflection, what has stuck with me is that my life here, back home, suddenly started to feel… overbuilt. 

where everything is dialed in. i’ve got a system for lifting, a system for running, a system for eating, a system for working, a system for dating, a system for building. it’s all tight; it all works. if you looked at it from the outside, you’d say “this guy has it figured out.” and i’m not even saying that’s wrong. it does work. and i do have shit figured out (at least, i like to think). 

but italy didn’t care about any of that. italy broke my strict systems. things ran on italian time. lunch was three courses. dinner, too. wine showed up before water half the time — if water even showed up at all. nobody ever seems to be in a rush; nobody seems to be trying to optimize the day, yet somehow everything still runs perfectly.

i realized that i’ve been optimizing a life that functions really well, but maybe isn’t the one i actually want to live. let’s dig in.

A ROMA

as with any trip i take, i scheduled a few extra days beforehand to explore on my own. for the past almost-year, i had been taking italian lessons in center city on wednesday nights. i found myself becoming pretty taken with one of the other women in the class., and i would walk her home after every class: i always walked 3 miles to class, and then 3.5 miles home, but it was worth it to talk with her, about our lives and what excited us. 

i told her about my upcoming culinary school expedition; she lit up “brian, i will be in italy then too!” excitedly, we setup a dinner date for the night i landed in rome. 

and feast we did! we enjoyed some lovely pasta and wine together… with her daughter who lives in rome (and makes handbags there that she sells in NYC) and her daughter’s boyfriend. 

oh, leslie is 76.

on our walks, she told me about how the only times she felt really ALIVE were the multiple 2-month trips to rome she takes every year, where she sets up huge canvases in the ancient roman basement at ‘la porta blu scuola d’arte’, with a floppy white haired instructor named alberto guiding and critiquing. she would blush when she spoke of him. “leslie, i think someone has a crush!” “oh stahhhp… i’ve been married twice before and loved two men that have already passed. i am good on that. … but you MUST join me at an art session… unless you’re a better painter than me, because then i’ll be upset.” i assured her i don’t paint abstract, and i prefer realism, so she wouldn’t like my work anyway. but i jumped at the chance to meet alberto and to paint with leslie. this would have to wait until after culinary school, however, because alberto only allowed new students on mondays and tuesdays, and i landed on wednesday.

IN OLD NAPOLI

so the next day, i woke up in rome and left for naples. i ran the lungomare both mornings, wrote code from my balcony, took a day trip to pompeii, ate some incredible pizza, and ordered an entire meal in italian (even asking questions for clarity!). i was settling in nicely, but definitely felt that two nights weren’t enough time in naples, nor were three hours enough time in pompeii. 

side story: 

the suave hotel concierge was certainly hitting on me, multiple times. upon my arrival, he asks if i would like a coffee. i said, "si certo! un caffe americano, per favore?”  and he smiles at me, rubs my bicep and says "a strong americano for a STRONG AMERICAN. si si si…” i laughed and said thank you. he took my bags into the room, wouldn’t let me touch them, and shows me the room via a tour that should have been 10 seconds but lasted at least 2 minutes. the room has a tub overlooking the sea. he points to it and winks at me, "take a bath, very nice view.”  

and then two days later when i was checking out, he says in broken english to me "can i take you to breakfast at the caffe downstairs, my treat?” i said in italian "grazie mille, ma devo prendere un treno.” (thanks a lot but i have to catch a train). he says, slightly dejected, "oh ok. a train.” and he puts out his hand for me to shake it, pulls me in to kiss each cheek. italians love their cheek kisses! but then he takes his other hand and pinches my cheek! either this is a new italian custom ,or he really didn’t want me to leave!

the taxi thankfully pulled up at the perfect time. awkward! 

https://blossom.primal.net/c84c746e52d29437ccaf525cb8b9b1a06d5795fd2ff8e0cac5b69728f4ae6546.mp4

the train down south wasn’t what i expected. i thought i’d feel excited, filled with a clean start / new chapter kind of energy, but it was more unsettled than that. there was this low, physical anxiety sitting in my stomach the whole ride. it wasn’t panic or fear, but i felt off as my mind wandered into the never-friendly “what if” montages — which i have vowed to no longer succumb to. it was dark, raining intensely, with everything outside the train-windows looking gray and chaotic as the waves crashed barely feet from the whizzing-by train, spraying salty mist on the tracks and windows. the gloomy energy matched how i felt internally.

i didn’t know who i was about to spend the next month-plus with, didn’t know the vibe, the age range, whether i’d fit in right away or have to figure it out, if my cooking skills were good enough to even be there. i’m usually pretty good at walking into any room and finding out my place. i can usually talk to anyone, anywhere.  but i was nervous. i had told myself this was somewhat of a reset, and that it mattered, and in doing so probably put more weight on it (and me) than i realized. maybe i tend to do that, when i should let things unfold more slowly. 

whatever the case, i wasn’t in my world anymore. i wasn’t in control the way i usually am — no routine yet, no system, no version of myself already established. i was moving toward something i chose without really knowing what it was going to feel like once i got there. underneath all of that, there was this quiet awareness that something might actually shift because of it — which sounds exciting in theory, but sitting there alone in the dark, it mostly just felt uncertain. 

i smacked myself out of it. ‘*you’re a great cook. you love meeting people. you’ll be fine.’ *

THE KITCHEN: ITALIAN CULINARY INSTITUTE

that fleeting feeling disappeared. and then pretty quickly after arriving, i had found my people. it’s rare to find people you’d actually be upset not to see again. but these peeps are them.

amanda and kristina (my partners in crime) — i ran almost every morning with amanda. she has run 43 marathons (and counting). she is one of the funniest people i have probably met, with impeccable comedic timing and a laugh to match. every morning at 6:30am, i’d groggily walk up the steps from the hotel to a friendly “buongiorno, what’s our topic today?” our run-talks touched on everything: families, addiction, relationships, marriage and babies… life, in short. she used to own her own cafe for 20 years but sold it to take care of her son, who needed some extra attention. this was the first thing she was really doing for herself since then. kristina is tina fey reembodied. not only does she look like her, but she’s got her spunk and edge. and doesn’t take shit from anyone. she would always tell the chefs her idea for a dish, and when they would try to guide her a different direction, she would do what she wanted to anyway. and multiple times, her executed idea was the best part of the dish. super skilled. super fun. i can only imagine the shenanigans she gets into behind the scenes at her catering business. i spent many a late night drinking talking-wine, or card-wine, or bus-wine, or breakfast-wine, or hill-walking wine with these two goofballs.

richie and aurora — a new yorker through and through, richie comes up to me on the bus to the welcome dinner and said “eww… i guess ill sit next to the eagles fan.” i knew we would get along great, and we did. he has a dream of building out a pasta restaurant with a QSR kitchen but with a casual/comfortable dining room. pasta all made on-site, extruded in the front window like they do in italy. i told him about pepper’s cafe and how my brothers and i constantly thought that that idea would THRIVE in the states at scale. i told him about the rome kiosks i saw that use flash-frozen fresh pasta and would have your dish ready in 30 seconds. i thought that would crush here too. after “graduation”, i followed richie up to bologna and got to meet his wife heather — a sweetheart and an amazing artist. truly great people, friends for life for sure. richie and aurora were very keen to learn and spent most of their “free” time in the kitchen, prepping for lessons or for our house meals with the chefs. i was super impressed by their dedication to knowledge and extracting the most value out of this experience. aurora is from montana and is fascinating; a fly fishing tour guide, outdoor enthusiast, food god to the celebrities at big sky resorts. she was young at 24 but has already lived the life of someone much older and wiser, constantly seeking new adventures and trying to quench her thirst for knowledge. after culinary school, she was headed to the UK to work on a farm, because it’s calving season. 

![PEEPS MONTAGE 2]( “\[PEEPS2\[")stefano and blake — this guy could make anyone feel welcome in even the most hostile room. very loud and full of energy (after he eventually woke up and walked in to class late every day). he was always encouraging everyone to get together. he had been at the culinary school before, worked in the kitchens before, and was staying after we all left to again work in the kitchens. he’s trying to learn as much as possible to fulfill his dream: adding an add-on "chef for hire” package at his family’s ridiculously nice airbnb compound in costa rica. i think they rent it out for like $3000/night… it’s THAT nice and can sleep like 20 people in casitas surrounding a main house (mansion). we WILL be going there, right stef? stef was my partner in the pizza and cocktail challenge. although we didn’t win the challenge, i’d work with this man again any day. we jive so well, and i truly appreciate his spirit and love for humanity. he kept me very entertained. blake is 23, from florida and gobbling up this experience with the kind of ferocity and curiosity and energy you see in someone who’s just starting to figure out what they want to do with their life. she wasn’t afraid to ask a million questions and challenged herself with foods and proteins she had never heard of before… there was something refreshing about that. no ego, just enthusiasm. this was her first time out of the country. it was cool to experience first experiences again, through her eyes.  ![\[PEEPS MONTAGE 1\]]( “\[PEEPS MONTAGE 1]")anyway there’re too many people to keep naming in a public recap — 22 of us in all — so i’ll keep them mostly to myself in my private travel journal. but laith and lara, pekka and skylar, that fireball remedy (she went by ‘medy) who cracked me up constantly, the old heads eileen (who reminded me so much of kate rapine, one of the chefs aside from my mom from whom i learned how to cook) and irish sweetheart debbie…. they’re all great and we all fell into a rhythm fast.  long days in the kitchen, then nights hanging out, usually ending up in stefano’s room which somehow turned into the unofficial ‘community center.’ different ages, different backgrounds, different skill levels… but it all clicked. the conversations were easy, the energy was amazing, and i didn’t have to think about where i fit in. it was obvious. the thing i was a little unsure about on that train ride ended up being one of the easiest parts of the whole experience. ![\[FOOD MONTAGE 2\]]( “\[FOOD MONTAGE 2]")then the days started doing what italy does to you. we were told we’d be done by 3pm most days — we were quite literally *never* done by 3pm. while we were out of the kitchen by 4 or 5, most nights finished with a four-hour wine sommelier class or mixology class. six days a week in the kitchen and classroom, fully immersed. i thought i’d be able to plug away at my actual philly work in the afternoons, but that idea disappeared immediately. there wasn’t space for it — and for once, i didn’t force it. luckily i had enough banked PTO and could let the experience be what it was. mornings started with pushups in my room, then runs at sunrise, then espresso at the same bar with the same italian baristas practicing my italian in the smallest talk possible. it never felt like studying really. and they never laughed at my poor sentence structure or word choice. sometimes i ate a quick breakfast of scrambled eggs and a cornetto (cornchetta, right mom?), but i stopped that after week 1 when i realized how much food i’d be eating in class. then it was straight into cooking — hundreds of recipes jammed into my brain, techniques layered on top of each other, field trips to wineries, a black pig farm, the second oldest city in the world matera, the heritage site alberobello filled with trulli houses. there wasn’t much room left for anything else, which in hindsight was probably the point. ![\[FOOD MONTAGE 3\]]( “\[FOOD MONTAGE 3]")back up a sec… that part still doesn’t make sense to me: i ate like an absolute animal. those three courses for lunch and dinner, with wine, and me being the garbage can for kristina or anyone else who didn’t finish their plates. insalata, pasta, gelato, wine, repeat… pasta, pizza, bread, meat, gelato, pastry… constantly. if you tried to map that onto how i live at home, you’d say i should’ve easily gained ten pounds. instead i lost ten. i’m lighter and leaner than i’ve been in years.  my favorite week was making cheeses, then making charcuterie, then making gelato — one week of some of my favorite things. and i was pretty good at all of them. i can’t wait to explore them in my own kitchen. i want to keep getting better.  being in the kitchen fixed that early anxiety faster than anything else. there’s no pretending in there. either your food works… or it doesn’t. not everything is supposed to be smooth or perfectly balanced. the best dishes had tension — salty, bitter, fat, heat — all pulling in different directions but working in harmony. obviously, i thought to myself, that applies to more than just food. **FIX THE DISH** week two, we split into teams and were assigned lunch or dinner, and north or south italy. my team was to create a fine-dining 7 course meal that explored northern italy. among menu design, table setting, and helping prep, i owned the intermezzo dish: something that bridged remedy’s rich and creamy mushroom risotto with a plate of 3 savory protein secondi. the intermezzo is to clear the palate and prepare for the next dish. i had an idea early on: a ricotta quenelle atop a radicchio puree with a horseradish “snow” — very alpine, very palate cleansing.  chef john said no to ricotta mid-meal. he doesn’t like that mouth feel. and he said the radicchio he gets down here in the south is too bitter to be pureed. northern radicchio is a lot sweeter but we don’t have access. if i were kristina, i would have fought back. but i was curious to see where this took me. "ok chef, heard.” i reworked the dish, changed out the quenelles for a crispy baked polenta cake (thinking of laura’s at the avenue deli), and topped it with tallegio cheese and pickled radicchio. again, with a horseradish "snow” on top. i liked the concept. it felt thoughtful. balanced. intentional. the problem was — it didn’t work. the radicchio didn’t crisp right. the color was off, turned brown. the flavor wasn’t landing. chef v said he could only taste the horseradish (i disagreed). the chefs were giving me signals, but i kept trying to force it because i wanted the idea to work. it wasn’t. and i knew it. i remember standing there almost an hour before service thinking, i hate this dish. not "it needs tweaking.” not "it’s close.” i hate it. instead of telling the intimidating head chef john, i told chef v, a kind and gentle chef that was very hands on with us throughout lessons. he says with a smirk… "if you don’t like it, don’t serve it.” well, i’m NOT going to do that. i will fix it. i tried adding lightly toasted perfectly cubed 1 cm croutons to the top. it added good texture but it still didn’t work. i tried frying radicchio leaves to get a different pop. ew, gross.  feeling dejected, but nervous to admit my failure to the big guy…  > too high pressure to get a photo, so enjoy this AI interpretation (sorry!) i finally manned up with 20 minutes left until service — "chef john, i hate my dish.” he didn’t overreact.  "make it for me.” i did, he ate it.  "what’s wrong with it?”   i said, “it just tastes like grilled cheese, chef.” "well.     everyone likes grilled cheese!”  "but it’s not fine dining. and it’s not clearing the palate.” we walked it back. we simplified it. he brought out some of his mostarda (candied apples and pears preserved in a mustard-flavored syrup) from the back room that we didn’t typically have access to. i tasted it: wow, it had a spicy sweet pop! it adjusted the balance of the dish. and it finally worked. not because the original idea was brilliant — but because i stopped being stubborn long enough to ask for help and fix it. "i’m supposed to make the dish, i don’t have time to make my own mostarda!” i said, guiltily. "you’ll use mine. i’ll show you how to make this next week. yeah, its cheating. but if you ain’t cheating, you aint trying!” chef john wasn’t so intimidating after all. that moment hit more than anything else i cooked. **sometimes shit doesn’t go your way, but it’s almost never too late to shift**. the only thing stopping you is that fear in the pit of your stomach that tells you to leave it alone. also, don’t try to force something that’s not working, dummy. it just ends in frustration.   **DON’T JUST CONSUME LIFE** the moments that actually felt best were simple — in the frenetic kitchen, walking back from class covered in flour, or sitting somewhere quiet sketching the coastline while the wind came off the water. i didn’t even turn the tv on once the whole time i was there. my phone screen time dropped to less than two hours a day, and most of that was researching recipes or ingredients. i didn’t replace scrolling with productivity; i replaced it with real life, and got tired enough at the end of the day to fall asleep in minutes upon hitting the pillow. my mind wasn’t racing. i was content. somewhere in the middle of all of this, something started to shift. the best parts of my life there weren’t coming from being liked, being wanted, figuring out where i stood with someone. they came from making something better than it was the day before, creating something from nothing, learning from people who were actually good, being present enough to notice where i was. i wasn’t chasing anything in those moments. i was just there. toward the end of my trip, i stopped trying to make the experience mean something bigger than it was. it wasn’t a transformation. it was a correction. a small one, but an important one. i didn’t come back as a different person, but i came back more honest about how i operate — seeing where i push too hard, where i need to let things develop, where i need to let go, and focusing on what actually felt good vs what just looked good. the parts of your life that actually matter usually aren’t the loud ones. they’re the quiet ones where you’re focused, improving, and not thinking about how it all fits into some bigger narrative. just doing the thing in front of you and getting a little bit better at it. the experience was amazing, a dream trip. but not everything landed perfectly. the last week we did a “grand” buffet and were told "real italians” would be coming to judge us. we all got excited. i was hoping it would be everyone that took care of us for the past month — the baristas gina and giana, the housemaids, the school manager barbara, isabella, the chefs, and all of their families. i would’ve been proud to serve them.  well… it wasn’t. it was basically us feeding ourselves and two of the wine sommeliers. there was an **insane** amount of wasted food because we were each making food for 35 people, and there was no one to eat it. i hated that. my parents taught me "take what you want but eat what you take,” and that buffet was the antithesis of that.  and at one point after week two, a bunch of people started getting sick. a stomach bug ripped through the group one after the other — aurora, rich, bethany, kristina… it kept going. i found myself doing what felt obvious: checking in, buying gatorade, keeping people hydrated with my runner’s electrolytes… making sure they were all okay. i am by nature a caretaker, i suppose. the next day kristina told me i had "the most dad energy of anyone she’s ever met who isn’t a dad,” and i added "yet” (hopefully). everyone laughed, but everyone agreed, and people kept thanking me for looking after them. it made me feel good, because it’s the kind of guy i see myself as. the kind of person who just cares about people — even people i barely knew at the time. and i realized i need more quiet reflection than i sometimes admit. even though it was rare over there, the time i spent by myself at my secret journaling spot — writing, drawing, sitting in nature — was calming and grounding. i felt very at ease there, and saw things clearly. i need more of that in my life. outside. in nature. near water.   > i just loved both of these graffitis, ran by it daily. i didn’t go to italy to find myself. but i did find something useful. i kind of found where i was getting in my own way. and that’s a better starting point than whatever version of "finding yourself” is supposed to be. the part i don’t want to gloss over is that this kind of life isn’t free. i couldn’t keep up with work the way i normally do. i missed things at home. i said no to things i would’ve usually said yes to. i let some balls drop. and i learned to be okay with it. i realized that if i want a life that feels like that, something else has to give. because if i slide back into the same systems, the same patterns, the same environment without changing anything, then this was just a really good trip. and i don’t think that’s what it was. it felt more like a glimpse into a life i’d actually rather be living. that life is actually pretty simple. it’s cooking more and sharing it with people regularly. a table that’s full more than it’s not. it’s starting the day outside, moving, before anything else gets in the way. it’s doing meaningful work, but not letting it take over the entire day. it’s building a space (“my space”) and a rhythm where people naturally come together. and it’s spending less time consuming and more time actually doing. none of that requires italy. it just requires actually changing how i live. now it’s on me to decide if i’m going to build that, or go back to the version that looks good and quietly feels a little off. ![\[MONTAGE OF LESLIE AND ALBERTO\]]( “\[MONTAGE OF LESLIE AND ALBERTO]") **LEARNING TO SEE** oh geez…. how could i end without this story: alberto was quite the character. he doesn’t let anyone off on their own until they’ve done a lesson with him. leslie warned me it would be about four hours, but i was game. we started with what felt like the simplest thing in the world: lines. he had me working across a huge sheet of paper, maybe five by four feet, using charcoal, which i actually enjoy and feel comfortable with. first vertical lines. then horizontal lines. then figure eights offset just a bit so they created this neat repeating pattern. he kept coming back to critique me — how to hold the charcoal, how not to press too hard, how to build the line gradually instead of forcing it. every few minutes he’d stop me and adjust something. then he handed me a rag and told me to wipe the board clean. after that he moved me into another exercise: draw a circle in the exact center of the page and keep tracing it over and over, slowly building up the darkness. i expanded the circle slightly as i went, thinking maybe this would take fifteen minutes. he let it take over an hour. every time i thought we were done, he’d say ‘no, keep going.’ i laughed at one point because i was ready to move on and he clearly wasn’t. that’s when he explained what he meant by all of this. he said the body has four “brains,” each with its own memory: your head, your heart, your gut, and the one people jokingly say all men think with. when you create, he said, you need all of them involved. he didn’t want to see me standing stiff or just moving my arm mechanically. he wanted rhythm, flow, the feeling of the charcoal moving from my hand onto the paper. it was half art lesson, half philosophy. the whole time leslie was next to me, working on something huge — taking her nude figure drawings from the previous week and building them into this massive abstract piece. she was completely alive while she worked, smiling the whole time, moving around the canvas with this energy that made the whole room feel like a dance. watching her and alberto at the same time made it feel less like a class and more like being invited into someone’s studio for the night. i remember thinking how lucky i was just to be there, part of it. after about two hours of warm-ups he finally let me actually draw. first instruction: draw your left hand, but hold it in a strange position. i immediately started using big, dark lines that filled the page. he stopped me. “no. small. don’t press. build the line.” he looked at what i had drawn and smiled: “not bad. not bad. you’ve definitely drawn before. you’re trying to pull a fast one on me. but i’m going to teach you how to see.” for the next hour he had me draw my left hand in dozens of positions without ever looking down at the paper. just looking at my hand the entire time and letting the charcoal move. it felt strange at first, but after a while something clicked. he kept repeating that he wasn’t teaching me how to draw — i already knew how to do that — he was teaching me how to see. after about an hour of that he suddenly came over and shouted loudly, “WIPE IT CLEAN!” i wiped the page down so all that was left were faint shadows of everything i’d been drawing for the last three hours. then he said, “now look at your hand and draw it again, but you can look at what you’re drawing.” he gave me about twenty minutes and came back smiling: “buonissima. not perfect on proportions yet, but excellent brian.” we sat and talked for another twenty minutes about how the body stores memory and how drawing or painting can release it — basically how creativity is a form of expression that pulls from all those parts of you at once. the whole thing ended up being about a four-hour lesson, with a tea break halfway through, and a wine break near the end — and good conversation among the small fraction of english-speaking students who wandered in and out. it wasn’t really about drawing. it was about perception. most of the time we think we’re seeing things, but we’re really just recognizing them — tree, building, person, plate — and our brains fill in the rest automatically. he forced me to slow down and actually look at shapes, light, proportions, and negative space. once you do that, you realize how much detail you normally skip over. the drawing part was secondary. the real lesson was learning to pay attention in a way most of us rarely do anymore. leslie kept my paper afterward and said she’d give it back to me someday. i don’t really need it, but it’s a good reminder to stay open to the world around me and actually see things as they are, not as i think they are. maybe i will take it tho… i don’t want to ever forget how good it feels to make things with your hands. so that’s italy. i went to learn how to cook better. i came home remembering that the point isn’t really the food — it’s the life around it. cin cin! ![\[FINAL MONTAGE\]]( “[FINAL MONTAGE]”)

THINGS NOT TO FORGET:

• i feel like i can pretty much build a life anywhere. drop me into a random place and within a few days i’ll find a rhythm — a gym, a route to run, good food, the best people, something to work on and build. which means i’m not in philly because i have to be. i’m there because i choose it. and if parts of it don’t feel right, that’s on me.

• there’s also a difference in how life is lived that’s hard to unsee once you see it. back home, a lot of life is consumption. you order things, scroll things, watch things, move quickly from one thing to the next. over there, you participate. you make the food, sit at the table, stay in the conversation. you’re actually in it. it’s slower, but it’s not less. it’s more. they even have a name for that typical evening stroll — no real destination, just socializing, seeing and being seen, digesting dinner, taking in the energy around you, and being present with your people: la passeggiata. it’s a beautiful word and concept. 

• it is best to be someone who just says things when they’re true instead of holding onto them. not recklessly, but not carrying things longer than they need to be. 

• i was sitting on a cliff over the ionian sea, writing and getting lost in my thoughts, finally letting myself face some stuff i hadn’t fully dealt with. i realized i’d been carrying around a version of the future that no longer existed, still trying to make sense of it, still trying to fix it in my head. i had to stop doing that and accept it for what it was: something that mattered, something that ended, and something that didn’t take everything else down with it. i also realized something i probably should have understood earlier — the life i want didn’t disappear just because the person i pictured it with did. that future is still mine.

• you don’t need to be fluent in a language to have real conversations. if you’re willing to sound a little dumb and just try to be understood, people meet you halfway.

• when you stop looking at your phone all the time, you realize how little you actually needed it in the first place.

• gelato is deceptively technical. it looks simple, but the balance of fat, sugar, proteins, and temperature matters more than i expected. gelato = math!

• provolone is just mozzarella, but salted and aged. WHO KNEW?

• good cheese and charcuterie require patience more than technique

• the dead simple italian philosophy that dead simple ingredients in season will always taste better than year-round modified junk.

• saving pasta water is not just my mom’s trick to use only if necessary to loosen a sauce. it’s vital. every time. it’s a main part of every pasta dish.

• blast freeze the pasta overnight after making it. and always, always, always cook al dente. both of these make it so much easier to digest and lower the glycemic spike (behaves a bit more like fiber and slows digestion)

• group environments naturally form their own centers of gravity. in this case it was stefano’s room turning into the unofficial “community center.” this speaks to me about human nature: give people enough time together and they’ll create their own gathering place. what has disrupted this is modern technology. all of these spaces (“third places”, if you know about that theory) are disappearing. the internet-connected phone has become the third place and it’s really a travesty. we need less “smart” phones in the world and more human connection.

• the way home, i took the “long way” over eight days: rome (twice), big and chaotic and full of ancient history; florence, all renaissance art, golden stone, the sweet scent of leather, and david’s tiny bits but huge hands; siena, steep hills and deep medieval pride, especially around the horse race in the center of town; san gimignano, those wild towers rising out of the tuscan hills with excellent wine; pisa, a little quirky and leaning into it; and bologna, brick arcades, incredible food, and an energy you can’t deny.

• i’ll end on this nugget, i should always remember, on her orders. debbie my irish sweetheart shouts out the door as i am headed back to my room at 3am (to go pack because i was leaving at 4:30am haha). “BRIAN, REMEMBER, YOU’RE A SEXY BEAST.” thanks deb!

CHECK OUT MY PHOTO DUMP!

#travel #cook #italy2026