The Metaphor of Movement
How One Unexpected Season of Travel Moved Me to Write, Taste and Reemerge
What started off as an experiment of weekly proof points evolved into an addictive rhythm of reflection and creation. I spent the greater part of 2025 writing with newfound respect for the process and resurfaced passion for the craft. One week I would crisply conjure up details from a place I hadn’t been in years. The next, I would revisit bites and sips from a trip I’d only just unpacked from. And in my favorite weeks, I would siphon off meaning in the moment from journeys still unfolding and in progress.
I seemed to understand from the start this was “the work.” This was the blueprint that would inspire the return to self I’d been craving. Inside each weekly post, I was using the metaphor of movement to sort out who I really was and who I really wasn’t.
For years I had allowed inertia and a habit of plausible deniability to tether me to the wrong place and purpose. As I think about that resistance now and how I recognized and overcame it, I see it was writing not traveling that ultimately picked me up and carried me out, through and to the threshold of my calling.
Writing slows me down just enough. It has shown me, fulfillment isn’t about piling on more, it is about stripping excess away. Writing generates a palpable, uniquely charged momentum that surfaces like clockwork from stripped back moments of stillness.
If Taste is my compass, writing is how I summon and season the frequencies inside of me to intentional, all-senses firing movement. It wasn’t until I came to look at travel through writing and writing through travel that I understood exactly how to occupy my place in this world.
Writing is cathartic and catalytic. I write around grief, regret and stagnation. I write between longing, disappointment and self-doubt. I write until meaning and perspective reveal themselves, often finding as much joy in the discovery and connectivity of travel’s coincidences and collisions, as I find in its infinite tastes and truths.
My thoughts on Tessera 42 shift. I pause and float just long enough to connect two pulsating dots to two turning points in my reoriented, re-plotted life. As it happened, the last city I visited in 2025 was the same city I first fled to when I lost my job in November of 2024.
Rome.
Even though this symmetry was not by my design or cunning calculation, it feels curiously orchestrated. I have, after all, been called to move here not once or twice, but three times in this last season of travel.
Why?
I flip this question upside down and inside out. I burn hours trying to find the lesson inside the calling. But I finally realize I’m not asking the right question.
Rome didn’t choose me. I chose it. And the answer, after 41 Tesseras, is as simple as it is fortunate, satisfying and consistent.
Taste.
I flew to Rome in 2024 to eat a bowl of Amatriciana at Roscioli. Full stop.
I also wanted to explore the neighboring Orvieto and Florence as I eventually did. Rome made for a delicious, cost-effective and convenient entry and exit point into Italy. Somewhere between logistics and one nonnegotiable lunch reservation an itinerary took shape. But always in orbit around my true love – Taste.
When I thought about where in this great big world I wanted to be the day after I was let go, I never budged from being in front of a bowl of fresh pasta with a big glass of Italian Red in my hand. A year later, when I thought about how I would get home from Malta my final trip of 2025, I never considered another city, another restaurant counter or any other meal. It had to be Rome.
This past December marked my fourth meal at Roscioli, my fifth if you count its location in Manhattan. Some restaurants just speak to us. We don’t have to pick apart the reason, we just have to be willing to let them work their magic. There is an energy around Roscioli’s celebration of taste that refills my cup like no other eatery on earth. It brings me pure, unadulterated joy to dine and shop there and even more joy to recommend it to friends and family. When we find such places on our travels or even down the block from where we call home, we nosh on so much more than food. We nourish so much more than our bodies.
This last time, the server behind the counter where I love to sit, made this meal my most memorable and special. She was fun, sassy and full of worthy and no-nonsense recommendations. I started with the perfect glass of red trying as hard as I could with every sip to absorb the sights, smells and sounds flooding the narrow, bustling room.
Behind me are towering shelves stocked to the ceiling with Italian goodies – olive oils, sauces, preserves and condiments, biscuits and sweets. On the left, an epic deli counter runs the length of the restaurant’s entrance, glistening with hundreds of types of meats and cheeses. Wines from all over Italy occupy the floor-to-ceiling shelves that face the deli counter, tempting patrons to indulge one last time before they step out into a brisk Roman night.
The epic deli counter at Roscioli
But the food is why I came. I start with the Cantabrian Anchovies. The server recommends, almost insists, I try them in the Bocconi di Bufala e Alici del Mar Cantabrico. I do. They come draped over fresh buffalo mozzarella balls, which sit atop the thinnest layer of fried zucchini dressed with a touch of salt and dash of olive oil. Then, my first course arrives, a half portion of Burro e Acciughe, smoked spaghetti tossed with sweet butter, more anchovies from the Cantabrian Sea and rye breadcrumbs. It is everything I hoped it would be and more.
Bocconi di Bufala e Alici del Mar Cantabrico
The main course, my beloved La Matriciana o Amatriciana appears and suddenly I don’t care anymore about savoring anything except for what’s right in front of me. I finish every last bite. I’m already plotting my next trip back to Rome.
Roscioli’s La Matriciana o Amatriciana
In between bites, I come to chat with the young man sitting at the counter next to me. I’m both stunned and amused to learn, he too arranges his travel around a counter reservation at Roscioli. But he’s on turn six here. My jaw drops. I’ve met a kindred spirit. We talk travel, food and what was next on our agendas. A honeymoon through South America for him and for me, New Zealand and finally, Cairo thanks to his endorsement.
Before he leaves he orders the Tiramisu and convinces me I shouldn’t leave without trying it too. I do.
The Tiramisu at Roscioli. And to think I’d written it off…
I stare down at yet another empty bowl in front of me as gratitude all but swallows me whole. I’m guessing it can’t, on account of all I’ve come to eat here. I remember the last time I felt this way in Rome - energized, grateful and full. I had just had a fabulous lunch at this very counter capped off by a similar charming collision with the woman sitting in the seat just to the left of me. We had the best time chatting over a glass of wine and those Roscioli send-off biscuits.
One more reason to return…
It would be reckless and disingenuous for me to say my December trip to Rome brought me full circle after a year of change and transition. I believe instead it merely marked and certified a journey very much still in progress.
I do believe, however when I set that November 2024 trip in motion, I deliberately albeit unknowingly, moved for the very first time for Taste. What’s more, I intuitively turned to Taste after arriving unexpectedly at an intersection of disruption and potential. And when it mattered the most, I followed Taste just like a compass to the doorstep of my calling and purpose.
Rome materialized back then as the inflection point, commemorating a moment in space and time that changed the way I experienced and participated in the world around me forever.
If movement is the metaphor, destination is the mirror. When we call upon the memory of a place we’ve visited, we catch a glimpse of ourselves that reflects the myriad of moments there that captivated us. When we soulfully scrutinize all that is cast back, we find breadcrumbs of what lights us up, enflames our senses and reignites life’s forgotten dreams and passions.
As I reflect on this past year, Rome pops up like an alpha star in a sprawling constellation. Each burst of brightness illuminating one more gateway, one more moment of truth in the journey ahead. After a year of doing the work, converting nudges and intuition into meaning, I feel the tailwinds of my labor carry me from one year to the next.
I step forward into 2026 to find a familiar intersection of disruption and potential waiting for me. How different it looks and feels this time around knowing I will cross satiated, topped off and most of all, hungry.
Every week, I send one new Tessera Blog on taste, travel and the truths we collect along the way. If this piece resonated, I’d be honored if you’d share or subscribe.
