In my almost 20 year long professional career, I’d have thought that getting fired/worn out 4-5 times could have been enough, but of course I was completely wrong. So at the not so old but not so young either age of 47 I find myself in one of those unemployment segments of my life. Although I’ve been dealing with different health problems this year, it’s been still difficult to accept the current status for many reasons. However, I’ve kept working on the same project, which I was contributing to before going to the unemployment sector of my research activity, and other research projects as well. Somehow, I’d say that I’m on a sort of long partially paid holiday because I’m getting the support for unemployed researchers from the national institute for the retirement. Moreover, the fact that I’m posting this late announcement of my job loss on my semi-professional blog means that I’m still working on something, which is a good thing both for my brain and my spirit.
Apart from some serious financial problems, it hasn’t been such a bad situation either. I’ve filled my free time with long hours in the garden (not sure I could call gardening what I was actually doing), endless watching of youtube videos (those on gardening tips almost equalizing those from American late night tv shows) and Netflix series, and long reads of good books (ending up reading more than I used to do on a real holiday). I didn’t listen to as much music as I’d have liked to, but I still have two more months of unemployed status to catch up with that.
During these first four months I’ve been questioning my career goals, which have been kind of silent and made me think that it was probably the right time for a career change. Despite that, I’ve kept sending those job applications hoping to find an occupation soon. Anyway, I thought about sharing my knowledge of some beautiful places of my hometown Cagliari with tourists using my passion for cycling. At the beginning of this month I’ve become a local friend on guidemeright.com with a posted activity, https://www.guidemeright.com/en/things-to-do-in/cagliari/cagliari-vista-da-una-bicicletta-en, which hasn’t been very successful so far. So, at this stage, it couldn’t be considered a long term solution for buying groceries either. I’ve also joined the bike sharing community of Cagliari as I did in Pisa and I’m looking forward to using this eco-friendly service.
Wherever my job will take me, I’ll definitely keep lovely memories of Pisa, Siena, Florence and the wonderful Tuscany. Here are pictures of some beautiful places that have become familiar for about two years.
Andrea Catte 
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