One Year, One Month, Twelve Days Later...

I’m heading back to Rome.

Despite my hiatus from blogging (which directly correlates to my return to the U.S.) I still kept tabs on my favorite blogs. One of them, the Olive Notes, posted a story entitled ‘Back to It’ in which she reflects on writing and her blog. It got me thinking about mine, how my inspiration for writing and my love of life doesn’t seem as focused as it was in Italy. It could be a combination of my American lifestyle, my career, a new direction in my love of life. I use the excuse that I don’t have time anymore (partially true) but more than anything else I feel as if I fallen back into a comfort level in which I don’t get the most out of life. My ever-loving girlfriend (A) is really the only one that keeps me on track with that. I constantly let myself slide.

With that said, I’m getting back into life…starting with my blog. It was initiated as a way to keep friends and family in touch with my life in Rome but morphed into a reflection pool somewhere along the way, one that I direly miss swimming in. I thought it appropriate to start anew with my trip back to the Eternal City. Our impending flight tonight to Rome has the emotional and intellectual juices flowing. There’s so much to see (again) and even much more to relive. Old friends and family are waiting, familiar dishes to be rediscovered, millennia-old streets to trail blaze repeatedly…Rome has seized me once again. Beyond our trip, we now live in the Upper East Side of Manhattan and there’s a whole other city (neighborhood included) to explore and immerse ourselves in. It’s only a two week vacation for A & I but it’s a catalyst. There’s no time like the present.

I’ve spent the last few nights reading old posts of mine and reflecting on where I’ve been, where I’m going, and who/what has shaped me along the way. At 25 I can say that I know who I am, what I want, and whom I want it with (appropriate use of whom?). In reading these old posts I thought about the questions I posed to myself upon returning stateside. I’ve since found a job I’m very happy with and started living a life that has me waking up a gracious man every day. There were questions about friendship and what friends meant to me. I constantly referred to my rooftop, of which I now have one here in NYC (not the same character though). I think about on my posts on positives and negatives of Rome, the beaches, weekend trips around Europe (I never posted on my friend’s wedding in Romania…epic), my family, school, summer, lifestyle…..I love it. I thought back to my guest post for The Lost Girls and how I loved the concept of getting ‘lost’ (congrats to them on the release of their new book and Warner Bros. contracting movie rights to their story). Also, I noticed a theme in many of my posts, with some reference to drinking, either while writing, during sometime in the near past/future, or heading to an alcohol establishment. It’s something I’ll look into.

My blog needs a facelift, I know, and it’s something I’ll work on when I return stateside. Reading Joe’s Italyville and Lisa’s LLWorldTour on a consistent basis gives me a sense of what AOL must have felt like when Google & Yahoo came along. I can’t promise it will be high tech but I can promise my writing will be as insightful (and long winded) as ever.

Love it or hate it…. I’m back