So about five years ago I moved to Florence. People asked me to keep a blog, and I did. I used it first of all to describe my experiences living abroad, in a city that I didn’t knew, and meeting new people from all over the world, and to share what they thought about certain subjects.

Over the time the blog changed.

It became a place for me to describe things I noticed while walking the street. Then it turned into noticing cultural differences and hypothesizing why things are different, and why we do the things we do. After that it became a place where I used to share my thoughts with you. Ghosts in my mind that needed a body. Some of social nature, some practical, and some fictional.

Then things slowly ebbed away, I got used to them, I got settled down here in amazing Italy, and the blog slowly but surely kept on bleeding to death. The last post before this one is from four years ago. Since then a lot of things have happened.

University started with me being excited, trying to get to know new people, and hopefully studying something I would like (turns out I don’t like it…). About this time four years ago I got to know a guy who now has become one of my best friends. Someone I turn to.

At some point I met a girl, fell in love, had my heart broken, and started dating someone else. Someone I knew, someone I cared about, but because of my half hearted state of mind I hurt her in the summer of 2013. We still meet sometimes, and despite the fact that she was my first serious girlfriend, and that I truly loved her after a while I just know that she’s never forgiven me for that uncertainty I put her through that summer. It’s something I’ve done, it’s something I didn’t intend to happen, and I doubt that the guilt will ever fully go away.

In the meantime I started playing ball again. It’s weird how, wherever you go, whichever country you’re in, if you know the people or not, every ballpark or backfield can feel like home. How strange is it that in every place in the world people will welcome you when you share the same interest they share. The park became the eye in the storm, a calm in the middle of the chaos of life surrounding me.

I met people who have become close friends, people younger than me, and people older than me. One group in particular is very dear to me. The basically treat me like their little brother. They keep me sharp, on my toes, and make me reflect on my actions whenever that is needed. They give me advice, based on experience, based on how they know me, and based on what they would do if they were me.

Going out became easy, meeting new people became easy after being forced one year to open up to random people. I even started going out with groups of people who I met that same evening (hmmm sushi and vodka lemon without lemon). I cared about girls more often than I dare to mention, and not always did they care about me.

To ease my troubled mind on that front I started to subscribe to dating apps, in the hope of meeting first of all new people. Random people that I didn’t know before then, and that I probably wouldn’t get to know in any other way.

Yes, I know, you have been reading my past, random things, but now I’m about to get where I want to be.

A couple of months ago, on one of those apps I met someone that is not like many others. Someone critical of thought, critical of the world, and who is asking the big questions. Questions bigger than anyone can answer like “Where did the universe come from?” and making comments like “Everything in this world feels random, it drives me crazy. Wouldn’t it be great if everything happens for a reason?”.

This thought made me think. It made me realize how lucky I am to realize that I appreciate the randomness in life, because all the things that seemed random at the time of their occurrence in my life have turned into something that by now makes sense. The random desire to live in Italy has transformed me, and done so for the better I believe.

That random day that my parents took me to a baseball field has led to me falling in love with the game, being good at it, starting studying it, and starting understanding it. Roll changes came, and I started training a team of kids only three years younger than me. After that the afternoon in which I was asked to umpire my first game came. Then I went back to playing, then back to training, then, in Italy doing both, to then continue playing, realizing my body wasn’t up for it anymore, and start to hang out in our resident slow pitch tournament. There I met random people, who realized my passion was this game. People who realized I’m a student of the sport, and who invited me to come to a tournament where some random Americans would be. Those Americans became contacts and after that friends. Somehow I became the assistant coach of the softball team, only to hear that I would take over for the coach as soon as the season ended. Then the big happy moment ensued: those random Americans confirmed that there might be an opportunity for me in the summer of 2017 at their organization in Colorado.

Weirdly enough that random day going to the field with my parents became the dream of working in baseball, and now that’s going to happen, even if it’s only for a couple of months.

So what does this all come down to? Well I guess it boils down to the fact that you might meet random people, do random things, but I believe that those random things can turn into something great. I think we can learn from them, and choose not to let things go the way they would’ve gone a couple of random events ago.

I can choose not to date anybody after having my heart broken, and spare theirs at the risk of losing out on them, just as happened this summer. I can choose to look for other streets besides the university without panicking, because I know that I’ve done things in life that have helped me move further along the line of life. I can choose to embrace the chaos and randomness that are presenting itself in this moment, and try to work out how to make it one whole functioning thing. It turns out it makes me feel free, and that it gives me energy.

The final thing all this randomness brings is that I can post a random piece about randomness on a random blog of which most of you didn’t knew it existed.

Welcome back to this page, where chaos can sometimes have positive consequences, and where I’m hoping to elaborate more often once again on my thoughts, and quite possibly on randomness as well since this piece doesn’t feel like it’s done.

We’ll meet again soon.