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I call it "How much authentic Italian food can I fit into my stomach before I leave tomorrow?" The salty tears of sadness and nostalgia that I let slide down my face as I chew only serve to add to the flavours. Want to say something about this post? Talk to me!  Twitter .  Facebook .   Email .  Instagram .   Bloglovin ' .

I didn’t know I needed to read this until I had already accidentally stumbled across it. It caught at my breath and chased the rhythm of my chest. Since I got back from Switzerland , decisions made, I’ve been happy and then sad and then excited and then scared and then indifferent and then and then and then and then and then. And then it made sense. I thought I was doing All The Emotions because of what I am about to do next. But that’s not it. I’m emotional because of what I’ve done . Last May I moved to Italy. Sixteen months ago I was a different person. And I don’t mean college-semester-abroad-I-got-so-crazy-shit-going-back-home-is-gonna-be-like-such-a-drag-nobody-understands-me different. What I mean is… I mean that I didn’t realise that I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t unhappy. Just. I don’t know. My mind wasn’t as quiet, my heart not as buoyant. I wasn’t alive inside. I was terrified of being alive, actually, because then I’d have to admit that maybe there were things in my life I need...

“Laura, You just focus on moving to London. None of this romance malarkey. The man who you are supposed to end up with is still married to his first wife.” - My mum. On Saturday night mounting pressure caused not only my mother to Skype-console me over the day’s events , but also for the Italian skies to open over Liguria and spit tears of frustration out over the hot tarmac and scorching sands- finally putting an end to the heat wave the media here have called Lucifer. It really has been hot as hell. Suffocating . When it rained I stood on my balcony in bare feet, turned my face to the Gods, and got wet. I’d promised myself that I’d consume every last second offered up to me by this infuriatingly addictive country before I leave. But, as the heat cracked, the sudden change in the air around me meant in an instant, everything just felt… different . I understood perfectly. It’s time to put my ducks in a row. Now. Internet, please consider this a shameless plug. As of Thursday afternoon...

So there I was, in my makeshift office at DREAMERSchool. Again. It’s the same place I sit every afternoon, from right after lunch finishes through until dinner at 8 p.m. The place where I religiously put my notebook to my right and my water bottle to my left; where the chair has to be backed up to the wall behind me so that I can sit up straight and see into the courtyard. The place where I am so often to be found that my Italian colleagues tease me, every day, without fail. Enough, Laura! they say. Go to the beach! Eat some fruit! You work too hard! They don’t understand that being in my office is my sanctuary, my church, my home, my rest, my challenge. To say this rocky square table has supported me through All The Emotions in the past two months is like saying Prince Harry is proud of the crown jewels. When that shit is all over people.com it’s a bit more than a half-baked notion. IT’S LIKE THE NEW LAW. This table saved my spiritual life . I’m currently a sort of electronic pen p...

This week at DREAMERSchool we have colors who make up a group older than any we've had before. As soon as they arrived, the energy they brought with them was tangible. It was focussed. Serious. Ready. We decided to really push them emotionally- get them to open up so that we could have an interesting, exploratory,  final session before camp ends for the summer. I shared with them my personal manifesto , and they were invited to scribe their own; to write what they care about, what they want to remember, what they want to learn. They shared what they had written, swapped papers between each other, and from somebody else's statement chose something that made them think differently. That line was then added to our Color Creed, and obviously I'll be hanging it on my wall when I get home because DAMN. THESE KIDS JUST KEEP BLOWING MY MIND. Color Creed Love Nature. An open mind can bring you anywhere. Don’t show your tears- show your face. Be the protagonist in your own life. Don’...

There have been several prominent themes to this blog over the past few months, and I’m no idiot; I can see how they all link together. I mean, there’s no such thing as coincidence, after all, and if everything is related and nothing is chance, I’d be pretty dumb not to recognise that BLATANTLY fulfilling my potential feeds into DREAMERSchool which feeds into paving a path for my own dreams which feeds into moving to London aka the place where I can sell a book, which of course feeds into fulfilling my potential again and thus, HI THERE, CYCLICAL NATURE OF LIFE AS WE KNOW IT. I mean, if I have to be stuck in a cycle of my own making, I’m pretty stoked it’s this one. The cycle of being drunk, sleeping with inappropriate boys, wondering why nothing was ever enough and so drinking and sleeping with more inappropriate boys to fill the void was, well. Not as productive as the phase I’m currently in. Kind of fun, though. Anyway, I make no secret of loving my job, and building my tribe, a...

If I had to estimate how many new people I’ve met since leaving Rome and undertaking a summer as an Italian nomad , I’d cap it off at about 1,000. Being essentially homeless (the colors ask me, where do you live? And I tell them well; right now I live here, in this convent. They laugh, and say, no, where is home, and then it’s my turn to laugh and reiterate, everything I own in the world is in a twin room upstairs. Literally, home is here) means meeting different folks on the daily. Some of these people I forget, some of them forget me, and some of them I remember forever and ever AMEN because THEY ARE ALL THE AMAZING THINGS. Strickland and I met earlier this summer, when we were accidentally  in a prayer circle  together. We danced in a piazza until 4 a.m. and laughed until I snorted gin from out of my nose. It was one of those nights. The nights with the People to Remember. I’d like him in my tribe, I thought to myself. And then, but I bet I’ll never see him again. Imagine...

I know I am prone to dramatic hyperbole, but INTERNET. I just had the most restorative, thought-provoking, action-encouraging all round blindingly good holiday probably ever in the world. Thursday night I watched the final show that the graduating colors had put together for their parents, laid out all my best clothes, and books for learning, and self-development notes, and just as I was about to go and wash my hair so that I could braid it and it’d be curly for the morning (and so my vacation would start beautifully because having good hair means ultimate happiness) I got collared by my colleagues for ‘ just one drink’ and didn’t stumble back into the convent until 4 a.m. GODDAMN LIVING IN THE SAME PLACE WHERE I WORK. I was so determined to do my Nice Hair that a drunken shower meant I fell asleep briefly in the bathtub and never quite got round to braiding it before I left for the train station at 6 a.m., my roommate still not back from the pub despite the fact that the train to he...

And the truth is You gotta have the balls to change - Vinnie Jones Because I am a mental , I happen to believe that the universe is designed in such a way that parts of my life plan have already been written. I believe that it’s my job- in this version of my life (because, of course, we have probably have seven, as per the String Theory of Physics )- to figure out how to get where my ultimate purpose already lies. My ultimate purpose was written long ago, and now requires that I use my own freewill and self-determination to reach it. The result is there, it’s just kind of waiting for my efforts to join it. But if I don’t reach my ultimate purpose this time around, I get another life, and to try again. Each life I live is informed by the previous one, so in each existence I am (in theory) more adept at fulfilling my personal legend as I play the Computer Game of Life over and over, learning the tricks and the special ways of winning. With every new life I get another chance at progress...