My Manifesto of the frustrated traveler

This doesn’t work.

The way I feel, I mean.

These days I am looking at myself in the mirror and I never like what I see. There’s an image of me reflected that I don’t recognize. She’s older, fatter, uglier and sadder, and I don’t like it. She’s wearing a nice suit with a yellow tie and a nicely ironed collar, her hair and make up look good, but no, I still don’t like her.

The truth is that when I wake up in the morning I hate putting up my make up. I’m all like “why should I put my make up on?” but for some reason I keep doing it every day. I would never go to work without. I don’t know why. There must be some “mask” concept behind it but it’s boring so I’m not going to get into this now. You all know what I’m talking about.

When I wake up in the morning I systematically start a series of actions I would never do otherwise:

1. Waking up to an alarm clock is already too much of a trauma for me.
2. Make up – see above.
3. Make sure my hair looks ok adding some hideous pins if it’s the case.
4. Wear stockings. I freakin’ HATE stockings.
5. Go to work (which means walking up a 30′ steep rise).
6. Get changed and wear a uniform that makes me look like a completely different person. And what’s worse is that in order to reach my desk I have to pass by a huge mirror that reminds me every day of how I don’t like what I am doing.
7. Last but not least, my job basically consists in kissing people’s asses. No way. I had enough.

But probably it’s not the “kissing asses” thing itself that annoys me. It’s just that the people I get to work with (4 stars boutique hotel guests) are just too different from me. They can afford to pay €400 or more for a night and that’s good for them but you should hear what they are capable of complaining about.

After you travel the world on your own enough to see other people’s living conditions, or you get to sleep on a sand dune and all you have with you is your sleeping bag, you would tell everyone to shut up when they come up with a stupid “I don’t like the view” comment or something similar.

You know what’s really weird? When I go home and I get undressed, remove make up, and put on some other clothes, I feel so much better. More confident, even more beautiful, I tell you. In my working dress I feel so goofy and I can’t do anything about it.

Give me my jeans and my loose t-shirt and I’ll be just fine!

Okay Giulia, now calm down a little.

After all it was my choice, and I can’t complain. I decided to come here, I found this job in a moment where I was in real need of money so after all this was just a good thing. Also, I love the place, it’s beautiful, scenery is magnificent, colleagues are nice.

What I am mad about with MYSELF is that I lost sight of what I really want to do.

I am not saying I will become a professional travel blogger because hey, I know, I am a second language blogger and this won’t make things easy. But I DO want to work as a photographer and I DO want to travel.

I hate not being able to be where I want to be, and with “where I want to be” I don’t mean on the beach with friends or “not working”. I mean, working in something I am interested in. 

I have nothing against this job here coz my employers are super cool but it’s just that I can’t work like this anymore. I just feel like I am loosing my time to do something I don’t care about, for someone else and not for me. I can’t believe there are people that do this for 40 or 50 years in their life and still think it’s a normal thing.

So many times I suddenly get the inspiration to write a post and I am at work. Same thing happens with photography: I walk to the hotel where I work and think “oh that would look great with this lens and at that time of the day” but then “at that time of the day” I am working. 

In my accommodation, I don’t have an internet connection. Sometimes I go online from pubs and bars and I definitely can’t find enough concentration in the drunk & loud people crowds.

While I write this, I am using a pen and I am scribbling on my 2011’s old agenda, on pages left blank. 

I am perfectly aware about the fact that I am not spending enough time doing what I like and want to do, and this is frustrating. You think I don’t know that my blog looks like a mess? Believe me I know every single thing that doesn’t work with my website but if you’re a blogger too you also know it takes a lot od time and concentration to do a nice restyling, so I have to keep postponing this until the end of my contract here.

Last weekend, there was the BIT (Borsa Internazionale del Turismo) in Milan. If you never heard of it, basically it’s a huge fair about tourism. For the first time bloggers got free passes. A large delegation of Italian bloggers was there and where was I? Working on my afternoon shift.

On April, Italy is hosting TBU (you all know this one) – what an event! I can’t miss it. But I probably will. The conference is 3 days long, plus I need 2 days for transportation, and it’s impossible for me to get 5 (or even 3) days off from work. So what shall I do? Nothing, I’ll probably end up gnawing reading other bloggers’ TBU updates online.

Contract expiring on April 30th. I quit.

This is my manifesto of the frustrated travel blogger.

Photo above: one of the very few pics of me in my uniform, taken on the very first days of the season.