go drink a beer, and forget about it

i need to take my advice more often

Self-editing is a cruel trick that on the surface makes me feel more in control, efficient and professional, when in actuality I am diluting my ideas before they are full-formed. So I attempted to let me thoughts and feeling flow out like beer from a tap. I hope parts of it resonate with you.

I am manifesting a life lived without screens

The occasional movie, or television show on the couch on a rainy day is the only exception. Now in the midst of fighting for acceptance by anyone and everyone (career, community, content), my screen time is through the roof. What’s worse, I have fallen into the trap they warned us about: don't compare yourself to others online. With a marketing background, I can’t help but compare and contrast my stories, images and outputs to my competition. That’s what marketing executives are paid to do btw. Ideas are not genuine and authentic anymore they are scaled, fine-tuned rip offs of someone else’s grand plan. See Taylor Swift engagement memes, or the Cracker Barrel logo debacle. This is one of the reasons I have been so nauseated lately.

I moved to Italy in search of a life worth living. At 26, I was going through the motions of my own life. Waiting tables, serving boisterous bottles of wines paired with $10 avocados to the young and wealthy elite of San Francisco who loved to come to Napa to escape for the weekend, was not my idea of living. So in November of 2019, I booked the flight that would hopefully change that.

Arguably, since the end of high school, I've been a solo traveler, even before I started traveling. I wasn’t a big fish in a small pond, rather a main character in the wrong genre. The cultural distance between me and my peers widened as I got older, especially as I started working in restaurants full-time. My world was then divided into two categories, industry and everyone else. We (industry) served, they (the wealthy) enjoyed. Their watches cost the same as my monthly car payment, their hair salon appointments cost the same as my monthly grocery allowance. I know this because I mistakenly asked a regular for a salon recommendation and $300 later I told myself never again. Is there a word more descriptive than frustrating? I am whatever the word is about living in a world where the economic gap is so vast between people existing in the same space.

This feeling of not fitting in living in the US, started to take full form after my first trip to Europe in 2016. I actually mean a trip through The UK, France, Italy, not the great “country of Europe.” This trip proved to me that life could be lived with less. Less waste, fewer cars, less to-go coffee cups, smaller portions, less stress about not feeling rich enough to exist. Some might see it as their freedoms being stripped away, but I viewed it as freedoms gained. Freedom to walk anywhere and everywhere, or rely on public transit instead of drowning in car payment debt. There is an inherent sustainability to life in Italy that I admired from the first go around. That’s why I’ve been so adamant about building life here, despite every obstacle in my way.

Let this be a sign to let your phone die for the night

I’ve been overwhelmed with the amount of Italian life + food + culture content floating out there, especially pushed by creators that spend less than five days in a place and feel entitled to share what they know about life in Europe (let’s be honest they mean Rome, Paris and Barcelona, maybe Amsterdam). If I have to watch one more person living in California describe what aperitivo culture is without actually having lived it, on a regular basis, I might lose it. The solution is simple, I need to turn it off.

One of the life in Europe quirks never discussed on social media, is the struggle with finding the appropriate package drop-off places. There are four-five different couriers in Rome alone. Working as a receptionist for a year and half, I got to know them very well. UPS, DHL, Espresso, Amazon, GLS, and Poste Italiane. I was tasked with a favor for a friend to deliver a package at one of the official drop-off stations. Two hours, multiple neighborhoods and four “no’s” later, I had to give up. It was 7pm and my phone had died. A natural end to the day, I guess. Top that experience off with all the other rejection emails I received that week, my body, and brain were fried and tired of trying. I needed empty calories and bubbles; my cure to everything.

I was in Trastevere and it was blatantly obvious that August was over. The crowds were back, the food tour guides were parked in front of Trapizzino the students and their parents were figuring out their plans for dinner. Rome was back to its wild ways, the summer was beautiful while it lasted. Luckily, even in the heart of the beast, my local beer bar remains untouched by the tourists, except the ones who know and love craft beer. There are not many of us. It’s taken me five years and countless pints enjoyed alone on a Sunday afternoon, but I think I have officially graduated to local status.

The ratio of men to women at this pub on any given night is usually 10:1. The 1 being one of the female bartenders, or me. So I was pleasantly surprised to see another woman sitting at the ledge opposite the bar. She had her sudoku out and headphones in with an IPA half drunk in front of her. I ordered a small session IPA myself, and took a seat next to her. Arguably, the vibe is sitting outside and watching the night unfold on the streets, but again the ratio of men to women does not exactly make it fun to be outside da sola. But then again, it depends on the night and my capacity for Italian social interactions.

We drank together in silence for a few minutes. I resisted the urge to introduce myself until my curiosity took over. Two hours and three beers later, while my phone sat flaccid in my purse, we connected in a way that I hadn’t with anyone in months. Just two girls laughing, sharing stories about life, millenialhood, smut novels and craft beer. It made me miss my best friends from back in California who I haven’t spoken to in years. Another side effect of craving an alternative life somewhere else. She was from Copenhagen, her dad brewed beer and whenever her family traveled anywhere, craft beer pubs and breweries were always included in the itinerary. This was her first solo trip ever. Naturally, like me, she found refuge in a craft beer bar. She asked the most poignant questions about life, culture and quirks about America. I’ve learned since living abroad that America is the great experiment everyone is watching from afar. It’s incredible how much US news she was abreast of, more than me. For a long time my father told me I should move to Copenhagen. I guess my ideas of equity in America, mainly in regards to food security, poverty and the colossal wealth gap, were too utopian for him. He suggested I see what the welfare state looked like in real life. My new friend shared some interesting opinions with me about the realities of life in Denmark. Another reason to put down your phone, and go get a beer; arguably, real life stories told by people are better sources than what you read on the internet.

Even in Rome, I daydream of Copenhagen

While working in the michelin-restaurant + craft beer industry, the idea to move to Copenhagen or visit for an extended time, was heavily suggested by chefs and brewer friends of mine. You’ve all seen The Bear, right? Craft beer, natural wine, great coffee, sustainability; on paper it seems like the perfect city for me. Every year I look at apartments online or go on a cold call spree where I email a ton of businesses asking if they would be willing to host an American on a work exchange program. I have listened to so many podcasts where Americans working in the restaurant and beer industry have made this happen. Unfortunately work exchanges like this were more accepted before the pandemic. Not sure if digital nomadism is to blame for that. In my experience reading memoirs, listening to podcasts and reading countless expat blogs throughout the years; moving abroad no less than 10 years ago was reserved for people who were willing to work in exchange for their stay, and often not in an official way. Most women I have met over the years, including myself, moved to Italy, France or Germany by way of working as a nanny. I guess anothe version of working for the elite. I guess for me, I was willing to do anything to make life in Italy work. A former co-worker, and my closest confidant, moved to Paris for a year when he was 22, over 30 years ago. He was a male au pair, taught English, worked construction and over the summer he fled to Ireland to work at a dirty pub for cash. Before he moved to France, he worked as a janitor at an elementary school. Objectively, don’t you believe that people with this type of background and thirst for a different life, deserve the chance to live in Europe more than a digital nomad? I digress.

When I read stories, newsletters, even interviews published in major publications about yet another American moving to Italy, I have to hold back my gag reflex. It almost makes me sick to watch others cash in on their life here. I didn’t move here for the recognition or tell sell my experience to others, or gloat that life is better in Italy. I moved to Italy to escape the feeling of feeling worthy enough for life in the US. Working as a bartender, serving drinks to the elite, pretending to be grateful for their exorbitant tip when in reality it felt like being slapped in the face with a fat wade of money. $300 on a bottle of wine was play money to them. I was not playing around, I was surviving. After two months of research, which I conducted after work, at the desk I adopted from the curb outside my house, it seemed like Italy, Rome specifically, was a city where I could disappear for a bit and be given the chance to live a life that was more aligned with my living with less values.

I moved to north of Rome in 2019 sight unseen, moved into a home with strangers, the friends I met at language school where a hodgepodge of characters that were not here as digital nomads rather to learn the language for work (one friend was a journalist from Brazil, one an actress from Prague and one gentleman who worked in import/export; insert George Costanza joke here.) The city was empty, so was the internet, it was a beautiful time. I never felt the need to post, or prove anything to anyone. Everything I did was for me and for my battered soul.

Go drink a beer, and forget about it

I fear for Italy, I fear for my future as a writer. I’ve exhausted this topic of constant competition with people who want to post about their life abroad vs. people who just want to live their life, period. But it’s one I can’t move on from. This is why I NEED to get the eff off social media. It only exacerbates my frustrations.

Five years ago, one month before my move to Rome, a co-worked suggested I watch Under the Tuscan Sun, I had never seen it before. I bought a $1 copy of the book from my town’s library five years prior, but couldn’t get past the first chapter. Not exactly sure why. But I loved the movie, maybe it’s just my admiration for Diane Lane. There is a line in the movie that has always stuck with me. “Go fix your house and forget about it.” Diane Lane’s character is so caught up in being sad about her divorce and everything that is missing from her life. And her unconventional, yet sexually confident, friend tells her to simply stop being sad all the time, and go do something else.

That simple line changed my life. I adapted it a bit. Go get a beer and forget about it, I told myself my third Sunday in Rome. I had moved there only three weeks prior and was utterly miserable. I had no idea what I was doing in Rome and in life, and I had no clue how to care for children who did not share the same language. I had all but booked a flight home to California that morning, but decided to go get a beer and forget about it. That afternoon, I walked into the same craft beer bar in Trastevere, the one where I met my new Danish, craft beer drinking gal pal and everything changed.

I don’t have an ending to this piece, but felt like writing it helped sort out some grievances that had been stewing inside my gut. In reality, I need to remain the course, and have confidence that my experiences of living here in Italy, and the community I’ve built, the foods I’ve tasted, the cities I’ve visited, the lessons I’ve learned in language, love and loss are no match for a revolving door of content creators and digital nomads moving abroad in search of a perpetuating a narrative of slow life here. Life ain’t slow here, not when you’re hustling. But I would rather hustle here, then be serving the elite behind any bar in the US. I’ll take my coffee in a ceramic cup, and make small talk with the barista, and I’ll post my life on social media when I want to, because I know my mom likes to watch what I am up to. I also need to remind myself when I feel overwhelmed, I need to go get a beer, get off my phone and forget about it, at least for an hour. Who knows what magic will happen at that beer bar, in my experience, something always surprises me.

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Postscript:

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If you are new here, feel free to read through the archive and see if past or present stories resonate with you. If you are looking for wine content: start here, in Marche. For beer content, start here, in Bavaria. And to get to know me a little bit better, this is one of my favorite pieces.

As always thank you for reading, and for drinking natural wine and craft beer,

Tana