In 2016, a professionally painted mask won me a competition. Ten years later, my very young classmate recreated it, and I won again. Between a full moon, a week of goodbyes, and a song that sounds like unlimited youth, I kept thinking about Pirandello, and how easy it is to wear a mask, or to become a spectator in your own Life...

There's a version of me, sitting on a park bench in 2016, who made a promise he didn't fully understand yet. I kept it for ten years — no apps, only chance. Then, on the last night of June, sitting in St. John's, I downloaded one again...

I turned off the car in the dark, and the fireworks went off. A proper welcome back to Twillingate, in a festival week with every hotel booked and a party that ran out of milk before midnight. But somewhere between the first night and the last, I felt something I had not expected: that this might be my last time here...

“I have known you for two months,” a girl told me at a packed party, and I had no idea who she was. Add a sunrise over the Narrows, a Newfoundland expression I had never heard, and another cat named Luca, eleven years later, and you have a week that proves people remember consistency...

Rain. Fog. Moose hours. A trip that usually takes five hours took me more than twelve, ending with me asleep in a company car, because I have one rule when I drive. What followed was a week so full of Life that I kept delaying the moment to leave Twillingate, and one Saturday nap I may regret...

Canada Day began behind a coffee counter, my first shift in hospitality in nearly ten years, and turned into one of the best summer days I have ever had. A few days earlier there was a staff party at Clarke’s Beach, a school bus I boarded for the very first time, and “Mr. Brightside” sung so loudly that people teared up. Then came the road up to Twillingate, and I still haven’t arrived...

I was in St. John’s when a colleague showed me a photo of an iceberg in Twillingate, five hours north, and I knew I needed to see it. I said one sentence out loud, backed by a very strong desire. What I found there was bigger than the ice: people who sing, fish, and fix anything, and who welcomed a random Italian like one of their own. I left amazed, and I’m still thinking about how ordinary Life can look when it’s this extraordinary...

The difference, I've learned, has nothing to do with what happens — and everything to do with whether you're paying attention. I found a small ritual that forces me to stop, once a week, and actually reckon with the time that just passed. It's not always comfortable. But it's changed the way I experience Life entirely...

A song stopped me in the middle of a Shoppers aisle, a few minutes before closing. I’d never heard it before. I had just come off a powerful workout, after a phone call to Italy with a dear friend, and a voice over the speakers was singing about how much can change in a year. I raised my phone to the ceiling to Shazam it, and realized the line was as real as it gets. But to me, a lot can change in a week...

We don't truly regret what we did. We regret what we didn't do. How many people are serving that sentence right now? The one who said nothing — not because they had nothing to say, but because saying it felt too revealing and somehow dangerous. Almost said it. Almost went. Almost tried. Almost is the heaviest word in the language. And it follows you everywhere...

It's easy to take a photo when everything is going well. But the ones I keep going back to? Never the perfect ones. There's something about reaching for the camera at the wrong moment that tells you everything about what actually mattered...

For years, I've had a habit that sits somewhere between confidence and delusion. Before the interview. Sometimes before the application. I open Google Maps and change my work location to a place that exists only in my imagination. Most of the time, it feels ridiculous. Until one day, it becomes my commute...