I have been looking through some of my old photos and notes lately, especially things from 2017 and 2018, and I had a strange feeling that I am looking at the life of someone I know very well and yet somehow don’t completely recognize anymore. Was that really me??
I was so enthusiastic about Italy. (I still am but not in the same way.) Now I can catch myself thinking about content, analytics, what sells, what doesn’t, products, audiences and what I should be doing next. Back then, I was simply curious and constantly reading about Italy- looking things up, making lists, saving things and imagining future trips.
I don’t know what changed……maybe it is growing up, the pressure to monetize or just the way things are now?!!
Step Back in Time
I recently found a list of Italian towns I wanted to visit. I made this list when I was working with an Italian client from UpWork. Most people would probably have just gone past that list but I saved it and somehow ended up listing those towns and dividing them by region.
On that list I had names like Smerillo, Frontino, Serrapetrona and Cagli in Marche. Atri, Lanciano, Avezzano, Capistrello and Navelli in Abruzzo. Pissignano in Umbria. Sacile in Friuli Venezia Giulia. Bagnacavallo, Castelnovo ne’ Monti, Modigliana and Pavullo nel Frignano in Emilia Romagna and many more!
I even made notes about where some of them were in relation to other places, like near Pavia, close to Bari, 3 hours from Naples etc etc.
There was a thirst. A big one.
And I may have forgotten that much of my relationship with Italy was built around that feeling of discovery. I would see a name of a place and become fascinated by it and then read about a book about it and then find an Italian word and then would be in a rabbit hole!!
I was always collecting little pieces of Italy.
I used to write a lot, much more than today. I used to post about books because I was reading much more than I do now. I wrote about language learning, travels, coffee and little Italian discoveries. There was always movement around Italophilia and it didn’t feel like a content machine to me. It felt like my life.
Then suddenly I stopped doing many of those things. I would show up for a few days, then would disappear for a month. I would become excited about something and then lose momentum. I would come back and try again but life would happen (the pandemic hit us!) and I would disappear again.
My blog readership went down, my Story views went down, lot of people unsubscribed from my emails. I used to have more email subscribers than I do today, and sometimes when I look at the old numbers, it hurts.
There is a part of me that wants to say, man I worked so hard for those people and I built this but what happened???!
I don’t want to make my old audience wrong since I was the one who wasn’t consistently showing up for them 🙁
If I disappeared for weeks or months and then returned expecting the same people to still be watching every Story and reading every post, that wasn’t particularly realistic. Was it??
I never really analyzed why people left, so I don’t actually know the reasons. What I do know is that I continued doing one thing throughout all of this. What I do know is that I continued doing one thing throughout all of this.
I kept sending my newsletter. I went from Mailchimp to KIT and eventually to Substack, but I never really gave up on the newsletter. Even when other parts of Italophilia became inconsistent, I kept coming back to my inbox and writing to whoever was still there.
Once a month, I would send something.
Looking back, I did lose momentum and readership but I never completely stopped choosing Italophilia. I was working in jobs that were eating me up, I was also newly married in 2018 and so much was happening in the world. I think somewhere along the way, I started trying to make Italophilia into something I could control.
I became much more focused on what I should post, what the hook should be, what the content calendar should look like, how many Reels I should make, how many Stories I should post, how to grow, how to monetize and what product I should create.
I started asking AI questions too and I’m not proud of it. And while AI has been incredibly useful to me to make images etc, I realized that some part of the process should have remained JUST MINE.
I want to be the person who notices something first and read something and have my own reaction before I ask anyone else what they think. I want to find a town and become curious about it and watch an Italian film because I want to watch it, not because it might make a good post.
I haven’t been to Italy since 2022. Some of my creative energy sits there- wandering around, finding things, talking to people and sharing those stories here. Well you must be wondering, what am I trying to say after all this?? I think what I am saying is that I may have become tired of the way I have been relating to Italy.
Maybe I do need a fresh way to share about Italy, not the same way I did years ago. So I need to respect that version of me and this version of me. I need to discover something new. And maybe that is why finding that old list of Italian towns affected me so much. Because that girl was already interested in exactly the kind of Italy I am drawn to now and all she wanted was to travel there!! God I miss her a little. She built something that, years later I am still sitting talking about.
And yes, some of the people who once read my blog are no longer there. I can feel sad about that without deciding that those years were wasted but they weren’t.
There are people who regularly read posts and my website, my Newsletter and that is YOU!
There are people who save things I share.
There are people who discover Italophilia now who weren’t around in 2018.
There are also people who have stayed here since 2013!
Maybe I’m a little ungrateful??
I have been so focused on the people who left that I haven’t spent enough time appreciating the people who stayed.
Maybe Italophilia doesn’t have to prove to be an Italy person because I already am an Italy person!
Thanks to that younger version of me who did what she thought was best-she never second guessed herself or asked for permission. And thanks to you, for reading my thoughts and for making it to the end.
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