An Italian Severance Package
I had traveled well for decades but it wasn’t until I found myself in Rome last November that I sensed the role travel played for me was about to change quite significantly. Up until that point, travel was both rest and relaxation and escape from the grind. It had meaning not so much because of what it was, but more because of what it wasn’t. It makes my heart hurt a little to confront that observation now especially knowing how I feel about travel today.
When I failed to disconnect completely and shut down to be present and recharge, travel could feel more like a distraction to life back home instead of the routine exorcising diversion I really needed it to be. I can recall so many of the times travel took this form in so many different places scattered around the globe. Places I was so lucky to be standing in at all even if my self-inflicted psychosis and career obsession sometimes cast a shadow of obliviousness over them.
In these moments, the demands of work could take a firm grip on me and drag me figuratively back where I had just come from. My head space would immediately be compromised and then flooded all at once by the marathon to-do list I left behind, the infinite pile of challenges presumably mutating into even bigger dumpster fires and the deafening noise of the endless loop playing in my head of annoying things annoying people said right before I left. If that wasn’t enough, then came the searing sensation we’ve all felt when we’ve stepped away that I was somehow neglecting duty and responsibility. It was as pervasive as it was predictable and yet never did that tension stop me from draining every second of paid time off, I had and enjoying every minute I had away from home. But looking back, it definitely wasn’t the healthiest of relationships, this dichotomy between life and travel. Until November.
For the first time in my life I was laid off with a lot of my team on November 21. I had enough of an inkling what was going to happen and when, so I booked myself out that same night to Rome to very deliberately the next day be sitting jobless at the counter of one of my favorite restaurants in the world – Roscioli. It had been 6 years since I’d last dined there and I knew to my core it was the only salve that could make day 1 of unemployment- after 3,650 days on the job at Wilson – easier to swallow. The exact name of the remedy? La Ricetta dell’Amatriciana.
It's hard to explain, but Roscioli filled me up and then some. As a side note if you haven’t been. Go. It has a marvelously genuine and authentic buzz about it and the food is simple, unforgettable and just awesome. I walked away that afternoon with belly full and future wide open empowered by a timely gift of solace in knowing this trip to Rome just like this meal wasn’t going to be like the others. It was suddenly clear to me as I let my heart play navigator through the bustling streets of Rome that professional failure and regret were no match for the taste and vibrancy of this city. And that’s when I can honestly say I was first struck by the restorative and transformative power of travel. Standing there in the vastness of the Plaza Campo di Fiore, I felt present. I felt alive. Finally free of those needling distractions I felt blissfully untethered. And not 24 hours after the biggest disappointment of my career, I felt it. Gratitude.
