003—Tokyo9 Act II: A bridge across
“In going where you have to go and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dull and know I had to put it on the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, than have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well-oiled in the closet, but unused.”
- Ernest Hemingway
This story was initially meant to be told in video format and be intimately tied to scenes shot in the great Eastern Capital during my second of nine trips there as part of my Tokyo9 project. Some footage still exists, but I had to keep up with a torrent of engagements, so I never got to put the video together. Perhaps I will one day edit the footage to realize my original vision.
Chapter 1: What should have been, is.
I can’t really say whether my life in the last 20 years has been successful, I guess one can’t really put the final word to it until the end, but sure I have lived adventurously.
I left Italy when I was twenty-four, right out of school, and went to China at the peak of its transformation. My port of landing was Shenzhen. Like most other people, I had hardly heard of it at the time. I worked for the first year and a half with neither local employment papers nor a regular employment visa. I didn’t have health insurance and started with a net worth of 280 euros, which I carried in my pocket when I crossed the border and deposited in the first bank account I ever opened. The bank teller was kind enough to open the account even though I had left my passport in the hotel room. That tells you everything you need to know about Hong Kong, and the world, in January 2005.
Sixteen months into the job, I quit and moved to an even less known city, Hangzhou, about a two-hour drive West of Shanghai, to take over a job of vastly larger responsibility for which I had absolutely no qualifications. I felt like an impostor, but my new employer was wiser than I gave him credit for. He had the acumen to understand they needed someone able to adapt fast to a new environment, culturally and linguistically blend in with the local partners, learn how things were operated with an open mind, and stick around through the craze without panicking, regardless of previous experience with the specific product or even in manufacturing and procurement in general. I fit the bill.
Fifteen months into my second job, I—covertly—set up the basic legal infrastructure to run my first business. My first deal came around a year after that, leaving me no further excuse to quit my job and go on my own full-time. In fact, as part of my leaving, I also managed to convert my employer into a client. I felt invincible.
I run deals as disparate as importing scrapped silicon wafers from Germany into China (before it became forbidden), selling photovoltaic panels all around Europe, the Middle East and the USA, selling Iranian oil to Chinese oil majors, selling a major Nigerian oil & gas logistics infrastructure asset to the Chinese military, I worked on several solar plants in the Emirates, a wind farm in Brazil, worked with the Argentinian Government to bring investment in their energy and transportation infrastructure, I was hired by the Chinese Government to advise on the development of an industrial zone in Eastern China, I worked on importing waste treatment technology in China, I advised Chinese State Owned Enterprises on securing contract work in Eastern Europe worth well over a hundred million US dollars and deploying dozens of millions of dollars in foreign direct investments in Europe, I established a renewable energy development company, developed it into a global group with assets across Europe and the USA, launched an investment fund, participated in raising tens of millions of euros into the fund, sold my assets to the fund, and became member of the asset management company managing the fund, and eventually worked through three long and complex years to secure a clean and financially dignifying exit. (And then, there are those truly spicy roles and engagements of which I am not cleared to speak openly.)
I wasn’t infallible, either. Not even close. Some of the above ventures succeeded. Others were gigantic flops. Some made me financially comfortable, and I dearly enjoyed the experience. And some made me broke, and I weathered the storms.
Each time, I learned a bit more about how to make money—a helpful skill, and each time, I learned a lot more about how to keep it—an essential skill. Thanks to the latter skill, I eventually set aside some respectable savings.
But I never considered a life devoid of the sense of endless possibilities and constant renewal I have always lived.
In 2022 then, after 18 years of living there, I decided to leave China, a place that for almost two decades had provided daily adventures and an incomparable training field to grow into the person I was always meant to be. A place where I managed to build a distinguished social position and a comfortable life, but also a place more recently culturally and economically deeply troubled, with a capricious Government. A place that has lost the magic spark that made it the world locomotive for four decades and is now struggling to keep the appearance of forward motion.
And so, after two decades of global hustling, by the end of 2023, I was legally free, physically safe, and financially comfortable.
In other words… I was settled.
Chapter 2: The hero in the adventure. The adventure in the hero.
They don't often tell the story of what happens to the hero after he slays the dragon and returns victorious to the village to find his wife and children in good health, the granaries full of crops, and the priest, the merchant, and the tavern keeper all thriving and in peace with one another.
What life does he go on to live?
What life does a dragon-tamer pursue once everything has settled? Can he live in contentment for the rest of his days? Were the external circumstances that forced the man to rise to the moment, or was the adventure in him that drove him into his inevitable faith? Traditional narrative arcs wash away the dilemma with a convenient, “and they lived happily ever after,” and for a good reason: because what happens after is a much more complex albeit less popular story.
“Now that the hero has survived his incredible adventure, will he survive the end of the adventure?”
I was aware that September 30th, 2023, my last day on the last job that kept me tethered to my past, also marked the moment I was free to start a new life.
However, the freedom I long fought for also meant a pressing obligation to choose a path forward.
After all, true freedom is having the liberty to make decisions following our own heart and intuition, but freedom is not in the procrastination of the state of optionality. Until we commit to something, we are no more free than the one who has no choice.
“The moment we commit to something is the one instant we live and express our freedom. The instant before, we may as well have had no choice. The instant after, we no longer have the option.”
The weight of the absolute freedom I successfully achieved on October 1st, 2023—after decades fighting for my financial independence and after years fighting for an exit from the machine I was part of—was a hard one to carry. It was an absolute weight.
With only a couple of months before the Christmas holidays, all the preparation work I had to do for my Tokyo9 Act I trip (the prequel to this story, narrated here), and with the awareness that this time I was navigating a major transition in life and therefore I should have listened attentively to what my heart was telling me, I managed to justify remaining uncommitted until the end of the year. Besides, I had spent fifteen years primarily investing in one of the world's most transformational macro-trends (energy transition) and in one of the most successful industries of all time (renewable energy); hence, opportunities to continue a career in the same industry were abundant and not time sensitive.
The pressure really kicked in by early 2024, when I fully realized that, yes, I was surrounded by endless opportunities to monetize my experience, capitalize on my track record, and consolidate my position as a successful member of society, still, this story also felt stale and unoriginal.
Did I travel to uncharted lands, draw novel maps, and deciphered languages of pristine civilizations only to return to the base camp to seal everything away as “my early adventurous years” and move on into a predictable, comfortable life?
By now, I knew I had to do something quick, before the fear of having lost momentum would creep into the otherwise deeply inspirational search for future adventures.
I also needed new input. You cannot extract new inspiration and real growth working with the same elements and experiences you already have. You don’t strengthen your life’s scaffolding by reinforcing the arguments in favor of your existing beliefs. You have to be ready to discover that you have been mistaken, or you sail a fragile ship.
And so I resorted to the quickest debating tool available: books (traveling would have been an even better eye-opener, but it was impractical for my circumstances).
I read like I haven’t in ages. I read self-help books, productivity books, entrepreneurship books, books about arts and creativity, economics and general culture, books on how to make a million dollars in a year, how to make a million dollars in a weekend, how to make a billion dollars with an app, books on spiritual awakening, health, and dieting, I started following a dozen related podcasts and put everything in perspective with my journaling.
I read not to sharpen the tools I had in my toolbox. I read with the crystal clear intention that I was looking for ways and protocols to change, I was looking forward to hearing about tools I never heard of, and figure out how to build those. When an answer is not ready to be found in your heart, the only hope you have to find one is to give up the comfort of your mastery and surrender to the uncertainty of novelty. As open-mindedly as you can.
I didn’t find the answer in any single book; I wasn’t expecting to, but the sum of all those books ferried me through one of the most transformational periods of my life. My self-renewal became so vivid I was able to describe its stages on a daily basis (as I did on my journals.) I thoroughly refreshed my notions of entrepreneurship and investment, productivity and creativity, and even fitness and longevity.
I also realized that…
“…living an intentional, creative, adventurous life of constant renewal was not just a phase in my life in the years past—it was not my youth, it is my truth—and adventure comes in my life from feeding my entrepreneurial spirit.”
I did not become ultra-wealthy, famous, or powerful, but I lived one of the most original, adventurous lives I know of.
And I would not change a f…
Nor would I trade a single day of my life with anyone else’s. And I don’t know many people who can say the same.
And that matters.
To understand what kind of choices in life will leave us with no regrets and, in fact, will leave us with great stories we can be proud of and a sense of fullness and meaningfulness is the most essential awareness we can have.
Leaving Italy twenty years ago wasn’t to run away from something. It wasn’t a temporary distraction. It was my answer to a calling—a calling to find myself. And I did. And now that I have worked so hard to develop all those skills needed to lean into the life I am meant to live, I will not quietly slide into more comfortable shoes because that comes with comfort and benefits and that’s what everyone does about this age anyway.
And why should I? Especially when I feel I have more ideas, resources, energy, and things to say than ever.
My North Star was clear: I had to shake things up once more and chase my next entrepreneurial adventure wherever it was taking me.
Except that…
…unlike twenty years ago, today my life is not mine only. In making my decisions and charting the course of my future adventures, I have to account for something bigger than myself and something that I love dearly: my family.
Chapter 3: If there was an easy fix, it wouldn’t be original.
Let’s be clear about one thing. My family is not a limitation.
They are the living evidence of the success of my past twenty years of personal growth.
It takes a lot of work to build a family. Every single adventure I have been through has prepared me a bit more to be a man capable of having a loving family of my own. Family requires you to give every day. It also gives back every day. You can’t keep the score—only in a family built on love can that happen.
But a family does create practical constraints to the nomadic life I have experienced for two decades—the only life possible if one wants to cross the lands I have traversed.
And so, here is the puzzle:
“How do I live fully what I have built and love the most—my family—without losing the adventure in me? Without losing who I am?”
Finding a single complete answer to that question was a long shot, so I worked on isolating parts of the problem trying to science out elements of the solutions one by one.
One thing I knew was that I wanted to stay connected with Asia, starting from Tokyo. It was clear to me there was so much more for me to explore and I wasn’t nearly anywhere close to have tapped into that potential. Even if I couldn’t live there any longer—at least not in the foreseeable future—I could still juggle a travel agenda to remain present and connected to that world. This is in fact how the very Tokyo9 project started—a nine year long project with nine consecutive trips, one each year—and the hidden force behind my trip there last year in December 2023. Something I put in motion even before I fully understood the role it was—and is—playing in my life.
I also wanted to give life to at least some of the many business ideas I envisioned and felt excited by during the years and postponed because the time wasn’t right (or so I told myself.) The idea of waking up one day to realize that I have day-dreamed about so many more good ideas but lost the courage to start with the next one would have crushed me—especially considering how my eyes were now open wider than ever and I could see endless living examples of people who had the courage to continue to renew and change and start and how, honestly, it didn’t even really mattered whether or not they achieved success… because they were living their truth.
Certainly I could no longer spend day after day on end, early morning to late nights, weekends included, working incessantly (this has been my life for the better part of the almost two decades I have lived in China), however, my experience in life and in business on the one hand, and my newly acquired concepts of entrepreneurship on the other, equipped me with tools to tackle new opportunities so much more nimbly. I now had the confidence to figure out my way around a much broader range of enterprises, and without having to seriously compromise my health and longevity. In fact, the sum of all such new habits and tools encouraged me to think that I could do more, better, and for longer, even by investing less time into it. (Time will tell whether or not I am right.)
My renewal work symbolically culminated on February 12th, when I decided to write a letter to myself in ten years from then (when I will be fifty four) summing up everything that I had unearthed during these few months of introspection and renewal. This is an extract from that letter: “There is no doubt in my mind that I want to start something fresh. I want to design my lifestyle. I want to go back to feel the excitement of the moment when new small milestones are passed with a product or service of your creation (a first sale!) I am a creator at heart. I can be good at “not creating” (repetitive, operational tasks) but eventually I feel my soul dying a little bit inside with every moment I spend caught into the script of a life made of greater systems and greater businesses I don’t have any personal connection with.”
I made several lists of all business ideas I could launch and filled in dozen of pages of my journal with comparison charts and long narratives until I felt there was nothing more I could discover unless I actually went back into action.
Of all the ideas on my list, I ended up picking one: Jam Nation. An app that helps musicians get together for group practice (product plug in! Check this out jam-nation.com.)
How the idea came about is a long (fascinating but unrelated) narrative, suffice to say that I picked this business (ad)venture out of half a dozen “finalists” on my list.
I worked for two months on the concept and on what I believed were some of the more brilliant ideas I could contribute. I confronted the mission with a whole new set of tools and mental categories than in my previous entrepreneurial experiences. I committed to doing everything with as lean a structure as possible. I also worked through a process of researching every aspect of the business that could be known in advanced, defining hypothesis for what could not be known, and devising minimum risk and minimum investment methods to test these latter and move forward.
By April, I was ready to launch a prototype. As I approached the starting line, I hesitated again. I had been engaged in so much “motion”—reading, journaling, evaluating, planning, designing, etc.—but not yet any “action”—selling.
I had invested so much effort into it but I could have still gone back to my old industry, enjoying 15 years of experience, a global network of resources, an effortless sense of accomplishment, a roster of medals to show off at my next meeting, and the ultra-soft pampers of an Old G. I could have still told to the world that all I did was take some well-deserved time off and no one would have noticed the tsunami I went through—whereas if I went public with my new business, there was no turning back.
I stood on the fence for days.
It was thanks to the presence of my spiritual brother, we will name him ‘K’—coincidentally enough the same person forever imprinted in my first experience of Tokyo—and thank to weekly “accountability sessions” he and I established earlier this year, that I committed to take a first step to launch Jam Nation and gathered the courage to make my new venture public within my community.
On April 17th, I switched the website access from ‘private’ to ‘public’, posted about it in the few platforms where I have a presence, and—most importantly—I personally wrote to everyone I knew. I told the world “Hey everyone, I am doing something else.”
I felt sick to my stomach.
“April 17th, when I told the world what I was up to, I was, officially, beginning again. I was not afraid of failing anyone. I was frightened of failing myself.”
Being an entrepreneur is far from the most difficult job on earth. There are many undertakings that are way more challenging (high stakes roles in the field of law enforcement, medicine, and the military are only some examples.) But being an entrepreneur is the role with the greatest existential challenge. You are, ultimately, alone. Your world exists because you wake up in the morning and convince everyone that it does—starting from you. Until you go to sleep. And the next morning you start all over again. Entrepreneurship is a Groundhog Day. At least until your enterprise grows legs of its own, which doesn’t always happen either until later, much later, or never.
And so the next six months went by with highs and lows that required me to grab hard onto every single last lifestyle coping mechanism I developed in my recent healthier years: a regular, tight, laser-sharp workout agenda, a scientific diet, regular meditation, focused creative and artistic practices, a transformational rediscovery of the importance of social network—specifically the importance of investing and working on close and intimate friendships.
The moods and motivational swings were harsh, but my lifestyle helped me through.
I had moments when I was overwhelmed by the number and novelty of the challenges, moments when I wanted to quit, even moments when I rationalized how I may have made the wrong decision; But also moments when I felt intensely proud and accomplished, when each and all elements to my decision were standing in front of me in all their impeccable logic and, in a way, days when I already felt a winner simply for the fact that I dared to do what I did.
What I didn’t foresee was how my Tokyo9 project was going to come and give me the energy and inspiration I needed and give my business the pulse I was chasing.
Chapter 4: A beginner’s mind.
My Tokyo9 project was originally conceived as “a nine-year exploration of Tokyo’s inspirations, interwoven with my new quest for a life renewed, it was going to encompass and symbolize everything meaningful I am lucky to have and be dedicated to the woman I fell in love with and married in 2018” (verbatim from my account of the first trip last year.)
My first trip had a photographic theme, but rather because that was the most readily available key to reopen a door and rebuild a conduit to Asia. It was the easiest way to build structure to the spiritual calling I was answering to (it now appears even clearer to me, by reading the very words I chose for the manifesto of my project, that I was already seeding, and hoping for, so much more significance in this nine-years adventure.)
During the weeks and months following my first trip, Tokyo9 started to cross-pollinate every other area of my life, and become, among other things, a spiritual retreat to reflect upon the events going on each year in my life. A moment when—far away from everyday conditioning and routines and surrounded by all kinds of net positives and inspirational cues—I could take stock of what happened during that year, my original targets, my cruising speed, altitude, and trajectory, and my landing point for the year-end.
Accordingly, as the days passed and my October 3rd, 2024 departure approached, I focused on weaving every thread of my life into my Tokyo plans: photography, videography, journaling, food, fitness, social skills, nightlife, and, prominently so, music.
Music has been a major part of my experience after returning to Italy. Since October 2022, I practiced one hour every day with almost no exception, and since October 2023 I spent most of my weekends at music school—eight hours of non-stop jazz trumpet practice each Saturday.
In fact, I decided to make music this year trip's central theme.
I reached out to every music-related school, studio, and group on social networks in Tokyo for which I could find a point of contact, an email address, a social handle, or a phone number. My strategy was to establish contact with other musicians in Tokyo, propose to meet to jam together—in bars, music studios, schools, anywhere—and let music be the conduit for making new friends.
Among other tactics I put in place, I also hired a local personal assistant (who later turned out to be a jazz piano player with exceptional skills himself!) to help me with reaching out to local parties and make the arrangements.
By the time I had to leave, unlike last year, my agenda was packed with meetings, shows, and social events.
This also gave me so much more energy to confront an almost 24-hour trip that—last year—took the best of my circadian rhythm and left me semi-conscious in the pit for nearly the entirety of my journey.
What happened after I landed is hard to recount in one run.
To what level of detail do you tell a story where every minute was transformational? Every single activity of every day—for eleven days straight—calls for both a deep reflection and an exuberant celebration.
I jumped head first into a public jam at Somethin' Jazz Club, a famous jazz venue in Ikebukuro, and into the weekly jam session of the Tokyo Institute of Science (mind, this is a city where each of the three leading universities all have their own independent jazz clubs with weekly jams... such is the kind of urban world we are talking about.) Everyone else on the stage has been friendly and gracious with me—despite my mediocre playing skills—and made me feel they welcomed my presence and shared the same curiosity, openness, and joy I was bringing in the room from the other side of the world. Also, I felt so proud to gather the courage to be on a stage for the first time and felt psyched that this happened in Tokyo.
I took one lesson with a music teacher and ended up establishing a short but heartfelt rapport with him—a Japanese who lived almost his entire life in Singapore and came back to Tokyo during COVID times with his Chinese wife. In fact we even spoke Chinese throughout our lesson. It reminded to both of us of the world we used to live in, and we formed a special bond as if neither of us fully belong to the place and our paths crossed during our respective journeys.
I was invited by the principals of the Tokyo International Music School to the rehearsals of their big band, went to see various players at the Yokohama live jazz music festival, and even caught Kandace Springs at the Cotton Club. Needless to say Kandace (playing along with Liany Mateo at the double base and Camille Gainer Jones at the drums) was a breath-taking show. I didn’t feel this way about listening to music in quite some time and it reminded me of how different it is to experience music live, both for the quality of the music and for the human touch it acquires when you have direct sensorial evidence that it’s real people actually creating those melodies and harmonies you hear. As high the quality of a recording can be, the reproduction of music will never compare to spectating its making.
I dived into my photography like I seldom did before. So transformational was this trip that I transitioned into color.
This may not seem like much, but after almost five years of shooting exclusively in black and white, I felt almost dizzy at the sudden realization that I was seeing colors like I never had before. I rediscovered how color can be used to express feeling and emotions, and be an essential component to build a personal style.
I also started to accept that not all images have to be about people (close-ups, portraits, images with subjects prominently looking into the camera, etc.)
As peculiar as this may sound, but for the better part of five years of photographic experience, I have looked down to any shot that didn’t feature a person as its main subject. In fact, I have been accusing myself of cowardness for each single non-people centric image I have taken.
A weight has been lifted and I started to embrace the fact that a photograph can also be, simply, an instrument to transfer an emotion—including to yourself at a later time—, and if a picture of a scene without people can make you feel something, so be it.
Also my photographic skills grew technically on so many levels.
I started to experiment with video (what I originally wanted for the whole trip and even for this very account) and collected footage throughout my travel and my stay.
I reached out to a globally famous "Ramen nerd" and bluntly asked him to pick the best ramen shops accessible along the various routes I planned to cover during my trip.
I never thought he would have answered, let alone work on presenting a program to my request but, apparently, true “ramen nerds” feel a special call of duty to spread the verb. He came back with detailed recommendations. I matched each one to a different day, and ended up walking tens of thousands of steps through a handful of Tokyo’s wards so that I could cover all recommended places during my stay.
By the end of the trip I felt I experienced such a range of ramen bowls to confidently say that I know absolutely nothing about ramen—the awareness of my absolute ignorance came from peeking deep into the vastity of the ramen universe (a perfect example of the Dunning–Kruger Effect.)
Also, not a day went by without a chance encounter, a reason to feel welcomed and socially engaged or to celebrate serendipity. The experience reminded me how beautiful it is when you give a chance to life and engage with others building relationships out of the blue. That is a defining part of the person I am and I do want to keep it alive.
Accounting for all social exchanges during my trip would be a daunting task, but here is one story that stands out.
During my visit to a world famous Korean BBQ joint in Shibuya I picked up a conversation on a moment’s notice with a small group of salarymen (in the best sense of the word: young driven professionals in their best outfits) pretending to be some kind of celebrity. I referenced the framed signatures hanging on the wall near the entrance to suggest that one of those was mine. I must have done a real good acting job, or the sakè they enjoyed during dinner worked to my favour, either way they thoroughly believed me. In the meantime, the small group turned into a small audience and more and more colleagues joined. By the time I broke to them the fact that I was joking, the laughs were loud and earthy. This eventually drew in the attention of their boss who—with the greatest kindness and most affable of ways, joined the conversation and grew and interest in my story. I returned the interest, and asked several times what his company do, and eventually found out he was nothing less than Hiroshi Mikitani, founder and CEO of Rakuten, one of the two or three most successful and famous entrepreneurs in the country. Now, I have never been star-struck by wealth and success (I met and done business with my share of billionaires in my life and, in fact, mostly disliked them) but his kind and humble ways were warm and hopeful and this made the event very special. Eventually, I was so much into the moment that I even forgot to think about the potential upsides of a business exchange. I didn’t suggest to exchange cards and didn’t pitch my start-up. Because of this I felt like an ass for days afterwards, but the memory of the event remains one of the fondest memories I have of the trip.
Curiously enough, during my trip it rained nine out of the eleven days I stayed in Tokyo, and yet I stayed outside, often walking under the rain, I went photographing regardless of weather, and run through my agenda undisturbed and energized as if on the best of sunshine. I also never even caught a mild cold.
I feel deeply proud of the way I went back to an alien place and in ten days built a world around me I would feel completely at home into.
“But the greatest take away has been how all of this led me to realize that Jam Nation, my new enterprise, was already the new adventure I was seeking for to move on to my new life.”
Being in a foreign land, and a land full of energy and inspiration, created the environment I needed to feel comfortable to be my new self without any resistance from the old world’s constructs that try to keep each of us as coherent with the rest of society—and our former self—as possible.
And so, throughout my trip, and through each experience—musical, photographic, culinary, social—I had the courage and ease to embrace and experiment with fully wearing my new hat, and the world reacted with nothing but positive vibes: principals and students at music schools showed their interest, bar owners and bar patrons showed their interest, and even during the most occasional of encounters I had a chance to make an impression and leave a footprint as leader of a new initiative.
My new (ad)venture was also providing me a platform where to anchor my newly built relationships and to create expectations of things to follow, news to look forward to, and opportunities to share upon the official launch and certainly at my next trip back to Tokyo (for Act III, in 2025.)
“Jam Nation is already bringing in my life the same magic I experienced in 2007 when I first because an entrepreneur: the ability to engage with anyone over a goal that is bigger than myself.”
And, yes, I do feel the sense of challenge and fulfillment that comes from having chosen a course of action true to myself and being fighting for it, but this is the ultimate sense of adventure!
“I had to embrace a new start with a beginner’s mind, gathering all the humbleness that comes from embarking on a journey as a novice—as opposed to an expert—while at the same time fighting the cynicism—from others as well as from myself—that kept me from dreaming big.”
During the last few days of my stay in Tokyo, I felt I there was nothing I was missing about my life in Italy if not my family.
I didn’t simply feel in a comfortable trip, I felt I established all my ecosystem: human, logistics, social, and even my own sense of purpose. Just the way it happened when I moved to China twenty years before. I made myself fully acclimatized and naturalized, and this is not something to be taken for granted—it’s one of those skills I learnt in the years, and to see that I could still move to yet another country, following my inspiration, and make a world and a life out of it without looking back or any feeling of longing was deeply gratifying.
As I was on my way to the airport, I also felt that the foundation of a bridge across my life in Italy and my adventure in Asia—through my new business—was established.
This may not be the condition of total abandonment I had the privilege of living through in the past, but my belief that something so remote could be built, using a little faith in what I was doing, a little confidence that I would find the way, and realising that my family and my close friends were in fact making my experience and my adventure even more complete and meaningful—because I could share it with them—were already working their magic.
If I look back at the events of last year—Tokyo9 Act I—it’s incredible how even the most patchy, scant, disastrous start can take you to places you would never dare to imagine. Places so much closer to your dreams.
All you have to do is find the courage to begin again.
Tokyo9, Act II.
L.F
