Letter to my past self

Dear Me,

I'm writing you this letter from the future to advise you on a couple of very important things.

First thing: a job is not owed to you.

The job market will be extremely different from what you had been taught and from what you had imagined. The perfect job will not knock at your door and your skills will not be magically revealed from the attentive reading of your resume. Use social media, but don't you think for a minute they'll make things easier. The personal touch will be lost and all communications are going to be more distant than ever, you'll be required to double your efforts to make recruiters understand how good you are. The job market place is not like school! To be good, even to be the best is not enough. Your future Cum Laude (yes, we got it…) is not a key with which open the perfect job door, sometimes it will be a burden and you may have to justify the fact you were able to study and work altogether because being a nerd is not enough to get a job.

Second thing: travel. 

Our region is wonderful, all mountains and nature, but you have been living there all your life and the world is out there. The United States experience is not going to be enough, you'll desire and thrive for more adventures. Traveling opens minds, it teaches you to improve your skills and to find the courage to confront yourself with all sorts of problems. Multicultural environments are not only enriching but also a great school to learn more about yourself, your limits, and your potential, never avoid confrontations. 

Third thing: curiosity.

Be curious, always! George the monkey was right, being curious is the key to success. The old school is good for learning, but it's old. Be wary of those who are going to tell you: "we have always done this way" or "I'm older so I am always right" or "Your way is wrong just because your ideas are new and disruptive". You will not be always right (of course!), but sometimes you'll be. Don't be afraid to bring your ideas to life, because if you don't, someone else will, it always happens. Read a lot, learn a lot, invent a lot. Try and don't stop, failures are only another way to climb the ladder to success. 
I really wish it were possible to send this letter to my past self, but I know it is not. Ten years ago I didn't know about all this, and maybe without those experiences (good and bad), I couldn't have today either. I can only think about what my future self would tell me to do today. I think she will encourage me to travel, read, update my cv constantly and always try something new. Change. Change is the key, adapt and evolve. 

After all:

“When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not yet ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back. A week is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny.” 

― Paulo Coelho, The Devil and Miss Prym

Vegan humor: broccoli and carrot meditating :)

Veg facile: Vellutata delicata - in soli 20 minuti!

Ci sono delle sere, quelle sere, quando hai voglia di qualcosa di buono, di sano, di saporito e sei stanca, troppo stanca per cucinare cose strane ed impegnative, e quindi?

Super vellutata gustosissima da preparare in soli venti minuti!

Per 2 persone io ho usato mezza zucca delica, 2 zucchine, 1 cipolla gialla, 2 carote. 

Ho tagliato la zucca e le carote per prime e le ho messe in una casseruola alta con 3 bicchieri pieni d'acqua (la quantità varia in base alla consistenza che preferite). Dopo 2 minuti ho aggiunto le zucchine e la cipolla tagliate a tocchetti.

Quando l'acqua arriva a bollore ho messo il timer per circa 15/20 minuti.

Subito dopo ho aggiunto un bicchiere di latte di soia vellutato, una noce di burro di soia e le spezie:

mezzo cucchiaino di curcuma, uno di zenzero, un quarto di coriadolo e del cumino intero.

A metà cottura ho aggiunto del prezzemolo tritato.

Una volta pronta (con il coltello basta provare ad affondare in tutte le verdure per assicurarsi che siano morbide) ho passato la vellutata con il minipimer ed ho aggiunto un pò di sale alle alghe e del gomasio.

Buona, sana e facilissima da preparare! 

Vegano! Ma come ti vesti??

Spesso come vegana mi sento accusare di non saper rispettare appieno gli animali, in quanto nell'abbigliamento sarebbe impossibile essere "cruelty-free". Sbagliato!

Occorre comunque una piccola premessa: tutti gli indumenti, scarpe, borse etc... acquistate prima che io diventassi vegan ho deciso di non buttarli. Purtroppo un animale è già morto e nonostante l'errore commesso, sono contro la moda dell'usa e getta. Solitamente compro poche cose, di qualità e le tratto bene per farle durare per anni ed anni, quindi per me gli acquisti ormai erroneamente fatti sono un investimento a lungo termine che ho deciso di rispettare fino infondo.
Da quando sono diventata vegana però ho conosciuto il mondo delle fibre vegetali e sintetiche che hanno smentito completamente tuti i miei dubbi e preoccupazioni.

Per quanto riguarda i sostituti del cuoio, vi sono moltissime alternative ed altrettanti marchi che già producono bellissime calzature, borse e cinture vegane.

Uno tra tutti è Wills London, del quale possiedo un paio di bikers fenomenali, resistenti alla pioggia e davvero ben fatti. http://wills-vegan-shoes.com sul loro sito potrete trovare moltissimi modelli sia per uomo che per donna con alternative valide per tutti i gusti. L'acquisto e la spedizione sono molto facili e le taglie rispettano quanto detto sul sito.

Per dei modelli molto carini, giovanili e simpatici, consiglio di visitare il sito di Po Zu: http://po-zu.com un altro marchio di prodotti vegan e vegetariani davvero molto validi.

Un articolo appena uscito sul sito Ecoliving http://ecoliving.it/blogs/news-notizie-ecologia/56425605-pinatex-la-pelle-ecologica-che-si-ricava-dalle-foglie-dellananas

l'articolo si intitola: "Piñatex, la pelle ecologica che si ricava dalle foglie dell'ananas", a quanto pare non ci sono limiti per creare materiali sempre nuovi e sostenibili che evitino dolore e tormento ai nostri amici animali. La ricerca è sempre all'avangardia e questo settore permette anche di generare lavoro, ricerca e sviluppo ed innovazione per una buona causa. Ad esempio si sono sviluppate anche delle versioni vegane del Cashmere, come possiamo leggere in questo articolo: http://www.vegolosi.it/news/fibra-di-soia-il-cashmere-diventa-vegetale/
il tessuto verrebbe ricavato dagli scarti di lavorazione dei legumi, andando a ridurre gli sprechi e la quantità di rifiuti prodotti.
Uno dei materiali più "puliti" dal punto di vista ambientale è la canapa. Moltissime aziende, anche in Italia, stanno rilanciando la loro produzione con il tessuto di canapa, resistente ed adatto alla realizzazione di scarpe, borse, maglioni e tanto altro. Anche la fibra di bambù è ottima e al tatto è morbidissima e molto piacevole per poter sostituire la lana.
Aziende cosmetiche come Neve Cosmetics realizzano già pennelli per il make up sintetici andando pian piano a chiudere il cerchio delle opzioni disponibili.
La lista delle fibre vegetali è lunghissima e combinate con materiali sintetici, sole o con altre fibre vegetali, si apprestano ad essere il futuro per il mondo della moda.
Se è possibile vestirsi senza scuoiare animali allevati per questo fine, dove compresi cani, volpi, mucche, visoni etc... allora io voglio sostenere questo mercato.

Le mie bellissime scarpe biker di Wills London vegan shoes

The perks of being a writer - Reality check

A writer lives suspended between two worlds. One is the world common people call “reality”, the other is the world of fairy tales, fantasy and endless possibilities. A writer does not see the differences between these two worlds, to us, this dissimilarity is imperceptible, no boundary line of has been drawn and crossing over is the easiest thing to do.

Inspiration comes when the fantastic world envelops everything is real giving it a new light and it comes when you look deeply at something real and you notice something fantastic has been laying under it and it was ready to be discovered.

For example, I can feel my characters talk, I can hear the sound of their voices and the expressions on their faces as they were actually real. To me, they are real. Sometimes I find my self sad or happy, depending on what I am writing; I am so deeply inside my stories that I can really feel the emotion I am describing and it’s hard to take away the eyes from the monitor and the written words and finally realize I wasn’t really there. Really? Wasn’t I?

It’s a like and infinite riddle or being between two mirrors and seeing your reflections multiplied so many times you wonder about infinite.

Writing, like painting, makes you infinite. Infinite times you may revise your story, not to check from grammatical errors, but to spend more time with your characters; infinite times you’ll dream of glimpses of new topics to develop and write about them and infinite times you’ll feel like your not giving justice to your ideas, because your writing is not quite good as you expected when you had imagined it. Writing is painful, you find yourself exploring emotions you wish you wouldn’t have to explore, sometimes you look for them to remind yourself how it feels, because to describe it, in an effective way, you have to feel it, to enlarge it and then enhance it until it’s so clear it becomes more than real.

I think reality is overrated. Scientists are continuously changing idea about the physic of reality: does it really matter, what really matter is? I don’t think so. In the end the world is ruled by emotions. Power, rage, fear, love: are these things real? Can you touch them? No. But they are here, more powerful than ever.

When you write you can feel them around you, waiting to enter your story, one after the other. I can describe a chair for one hour, but when I write about emotions, I could go on for days, no limits, only infinite chances, infinite stories and personal views. If this isn’t magic, I don’t know what it is.

Writing saved my life, combining my overdeveloped imagination with my desire to take it all out and put it down in words, that was my anchor.

I have notebook, black covered one that I always keep close. Sometimes at night I wake up with impressive thoughts, so I write them down on my notebook, but by the time they’re out they have lost half of their powerful meaning. It’s not easy to write, you must learn to live with perpetual dissatisfaction, because it doesn’t matter how good you are with words and expressions, those come from the world of reality and they’ll never be enough for infinity.