Freelancer Field Notes 01

Grounded in Italy... how being stuck allowed me to move forward

My favourite pieces to read are always the really personal ones, the raw accounts of life and work’s mundane happenings and how people make sense of it all. So here I’ll be popping in with one of these posts from out in ‘the field’ as a freelance photographer, writer and brand consultant every month or two.

The hills turning green this month outside my town in Italy.

We were supposed to go away this winter. My husband and I take flight every winter for a month or two for a change of scene from our small town in Italy. But we never could quite nail down a place or time to squeeze it in this year.

Maybe it should have been a sign that we weren’t going anywhere.

Taking Some Time Off

Let’s rewind a bit. In the second half of last year, I took on a really intense photography commission, taking photos for one of the world’s biggest travel brands, travelling in Italy and shooting every day for two and a half months straight.

The idea was to learn a lot, add some amazing work in some breathtaking places to my portfolio, and make enough money to take some time off my consulting work to figure out what I wanted to do next.

Being offered this great months-long travel photography gig reminded me how powerful I really am to create my reality. So I wanted to create a bit of space to understand if where I was going was really where I wanted to end up.

I thought I’d take a month to reflect, then hit the ground running—revamping my photography portfolio, refining my brand consulting site, and finally stepping out of the ‘hiding’ I’d fallen into, posting only polished travel images and portfolio work on Instagram. I craved a creative space where I could express myself freely, share the messy middle and connect with you deeper.

The way things unfolded in reality was a little different though. It turns out I had some ‘cleaning up’ to do first.

Learning to Drive, Like an Italian

In November, I found out I could no longer drive on my French license, and I’d given up my Australian one long ago. I ended up being forced to take on the all-consuming task of getting my Italian driver’s license from scratch here, entailing an incredibly detailed theory exam even Italians find near-impossible to pass, six hours of driving lessons and a practical exam. I decided to make it a double feature of Italian bureaucracy, navigating the maze of a multi-country document-gathering mission to apply for Italian citizenship too.

All this study and admin became my full-time job from November to the end of January, around a few shoots here and there and a couple of small writing jobs.

The joy of peeling the P (learner) plates off my car in Italy and getting back my right to drive.

For anyone whose been through the process of getting a license from scratch in another country and language, after decades of being a legit driver at home, you’ll know it’s a humbling task. A difficult one too involving hours of study, online lessons and practice exams every day, getting it wrong constantly until you finally get it right.

But, upside, committing to passing this test showed me how discplined I can be when I really want something. It’s a word I’d also use to describe pushing through my big photography gig last year, and something I never knew I had in me to this level.

It felt like the world was trying to teach me a valuable lesson, at the age of 38 (ha!). If I could achieve this, I reasoned, surely I could pull anything off with some discipline, this time applying it to my own creative pursuits.

Grounded at Home in Italy

Montalfoglio hilltop town, snapped on iPhone at sunset on my walk home from my office in my just-as-cute town in Marche, Italy.

February came and went by in a blur — Tuscany, Rome, Paris — and by early March I’d arrived at the last hurdle: my practical exam. Cleverly scheduled two days before I would drive off into the sunset all the way to Mallorca in Spain for a month there with my husband and dog, everything was falling into place.

Life it seems had other plans for us though. The week we were to leave, everything kind of fell apart.

Our epileptic dog suffered a severe cluster of seizures. A clerical error delayed my driving test by another three weeks. I fell sick — badly enough to require a hospital visit.

I couldn’t drive off into the sunset without a license, my dog, my health. The universe, it seemed, had conspired to keep us grounded here.

I had my bags packed, my summer clothes washed, I was ready to leave for Mallorca.

I’ve heard stories of guardian angels whispering in the right ears, clearing paths, nudging fate forward. This felt like the opposite — like unseen hands holding us back, telling us to stay. And so, we did.

Enforced Creative Expression

So what to do stuck at home? When space has been cleared, all obligations tied up and no distractions remain?

I found myself at the end of my to-do list, perhaps for the first time in over 12 years of freelancing. With a sizeable photography job lined up for mid-April, I had time — real, uninterrupted time — to tackle the uncomfortable task of wrangling my rogue creative dreams into something tangible. With the help of my new friend discipline.

Early morning yoga/meditation/journalling; out my window at home.

I decided to impose some structure on my creative chaos, waking up at 7am every day to go for a sunlight walk (it wakes up your brain!), followed by a 30-minute online yoga class, 20 minutes of meditation and three pages of free writing. ‘Meeting myself before I meet the world’, I called it.

I scheduled weekly accountability meetings with a friend also trying to bring a project to life, setting myself real deadlines someone would keep me to.

I walked for an hour every day in the hills around my town with my dog, grey days, rainy days, sunny days, no excuses.

The hills where Tony and I walk every day.

And I felt a huge resurgence of energy, positivity and belief in myself return. I could hear myself too, in all those quiet moments, and finally it all made sense. I was ready.

Of course, I sat down every day at my computer too. With nothing more than a bunch of accumulated Substack Ideas in my Notes app, I planned and built this newsletter/community.

With enough self-belief and light in my eyes to see the possibility of it all, I finally had the courage to start creating a new home for the writing/videos/community I’ve seen in my head for years.

And I lived the certainty that timing is everything, and timing is often out of our control, one of my teachers’ words echoing in my ears:

You don’t need to worry that you’re lagging behind because when it’s time to do something, you can’t not do it.

So it was finally time. It feels like everything stopped not to hold me back, but to allow me some space to finally create and move forward in a direction that feels right.

Last week, I passed my driver’s test (in 10 minutes!) and was handed my license to drive. And I finally launched this newsletter out into the world that same week, a new space to create and connect.

Up Next…

Next I’ll be starting a photography project for a company I really admire, travelling throughout Europe (five countries!) on and off for the next three months.

This project came across my inbox via a designer friend of mine I’ve worked with before; I initially met the team involved doing social media content creation for them. I then did a two-day shoot for this brand a few years ago and tried to go above and beyond the brief which I think always pays off in the long-run, for your portfolio and for the client.

I’m starting off in Greece with my husband (a fellow photographer) helping out on the shoot, before taking a week off to holiday together on an island and then in Athens. Expect a travel guide!

I’ll then jet off solo to a country I’ve never visited before to continue shooting this project and explore the area for a few days too. Excited to take you along with me, on here and Instagram and share more of the process when I get back.

This Month

Asparagus season, dashboard asparagus collection point and ready to eat at home.

Eating: Asparagus with/on/beside every meal because they’re growing wild where I live and we and all our neighbours, family and friends are in casual competition to see who can amass the greatest haul in one day — 5kg is the best I’ve heard of.(My asparagus hunting Sunday)

Taking advice from: Daniel Priestley, who basically put into words everything I have felt about this new era of work we are in and the importance of personal branding and not just exchanging your labour/hours for money, on his latest Diary of a CEO interview.

Making me believe in things I can’t see: The Telepathy Tapes podcast, tipped off via one of my other favourite podcasts that’s now back from hiatus, The Guided Collective.

Lifting my energy with: Getting back into a morning spiritual practice (meeting myself before I meet the world) with Elena Brower’s yoga classes on Glo, transcendental meditation and morning pages. Not sure how long this will last but enjoying while I have the space.

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Have you had a similar experience with some kind of force holding you back? Or pushing you forward? What about applying discipline to bring your creative ideas into form? Would love to hear about it below in the comments!