It started, as many things do, with a very bad Tuesday.
The kind where your inbox is full of obligation. Where your face looks tired even after eight hours of sleep. Where the small talk feels unbearable and the big talk never happens. Where you suddenly remember, in vivid detail, the exact sound your Grade 11 math teacher made when she sighed at you.
On that particular Tuesday, I was one awkward Zoom call and two mediocre errands deep when I opened my laptop and typed the words:
“Long-term rentals in Italy.”
And just like that, I was gone.
Gone in the way only the internet lets you be. Clicking through stone farmhouses with chipped shutters and lemon trees. Fantasizing about linen sheets, espresso rituals, and finally learning the word for “dish rack” in Italian. I imagined myself writing in a sun-dappled room. Walking cobbled alleys to the market. Forgetting, completely, how to check Teams.
It was not a plan. It was an escape hatch. And it worked.
For about 45 minutes.
Sometimes the dream isn’t the destination. It’s the signal.
By the time I snapped out of it, still very much in my actual home, with my actual to-do list, I realized the fantasy wasn’t about moving to Italy. It was about wanting to feel something else.
Stillness. Sensory pleasure. Space.
It told me something my “normal” wasn’t telling me: I was depleted. Uninspired. Disconnected from the parts of life that feed me.
And instead of bulldozing through with another round of productivity theatre, my brain did what brains do: it tried to save me with a fantasy.
It doesn’t have to be Italy. But it has to be something.
We all have our Italy.
The person you still Google sometimes. The cottage you look at on real estate sites even though you’re not actually looking.
These dreams are rarely literal. They are longing in disguise.
And when we treat them like pure escapism, we miss the point.
Because that dream? It’s trying to help you. It’s showing you a version of life where something vital is being met. And maybe, just maybe, that thing is possible in your real life too.
So I made a list. Not of places. Of feelings.
Instead of obsessing over relocation logistics or checking the exchange rate, I sat down and wrote what “Italy” meant to me.
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Spacious mornings.
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Work that doesn’t feel like punishment.
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Food that tastes like it was made by hand, not manufactured for speed.
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Connection. With people. With the world. With myself.
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Beauty that isn’t productive or strategic or for sale.
And then I asked myself: Where can I find these things here?
Not all of them. Not all at once. But enough.
Enough to change the texture of my days. Enough to quiet the part of me that keeps trying to run.
You don’t have to burn your life down to build a better one
This is what I know now:
Sometimes the fantasy is a map.
Sometimes the craving is a compass.
And sometimes the life you want is already trying to reach you—through a recipe you stopped making. A hobby you abandoned. A friendship you’ve let go dormant. A slow walk you used to take without your phone.
We don’t always need a new country. We just need a new rhythm. A new lens. A moment of courage to say: this isn’t working for me anymore, and a second moment to ask: what might?