If years ago someone had told me that I would end up being a blogger and that the subjects I would be most passionate about would be ancient history, religion, and comparative mythology… I wouldn’t have believed it!
When I was younger, I was absolutely convinced I wanted to become an engineer and pursue a career in a major tech company, and I did it: I am very satisfied with my career in the aerospace industry. It was a very important professional experience.
But then I decided to do something else.
These are my work experiences:
Actions define a man far more than his words:
It’s not who I am underneath,
but what I do that defines me.
Bruce Wayne (Batman)
First jobs during my studies
After my first year at university, I felt the urge to “do something” beyond studying.
I initially enrolled in mechanical engineering because, like many young people back then, I liked cars. I became a Technical Commissioner of the Italian Motorsport Commission: basically, my colleagues and I inspected racing cars competing in minor competitions (no Formula 1 or major races) and acted as marshals in regional rallies. It was exciting at first, but I decided to quit after a nighttime rally where we narrowly escaped serious danger.
A serious job that deeply engaged me was working as a sales agent for a meal voucher company (Day Ristoservice). Besides being an excellent learning experience, it gave me the chance to travel across Italy and speak with many people. The pearls of wisdom I received from some southern Italian restaurateurs were life lessons as valuable as my university lectures. I did so well in that small company that, after a few years, I had to decide whether to pursue the opportunity to become the young director of a minor branch (I was just over 20) or leave the job to finish my studies and aim for something bigger. I made the right choice. Before leaving, I also had the opportunity to select my replacement, which taught me a lot about the hiring process from the perspective of the interviewer.
Throughout my studies, I also took advantage of my passion for computers: through word of mouth, I found myself giving many lessons on how to use Windows and Office and setting up desktops and configuring laptops. Knowing what’s beneath the surface of Windows and understanding how computers work has always been helpful to me, and at the time, it was also very profitable.
Just before graduating, I even managed to provide some technical consultancy to story editors at Aran Endemol: I helped make the stories of some TV series and telenovelas more credible in terms of economics, finance, or technology. I grounded the wild imagination of the TV writers. It was fun.
Among my study peers, I worked the most, never as a waiter or anything similar but always in interesting and stimulating roles. It was important: when I got my first serious engineering job, I was no longer an inexperienced youngster, and the skills I had already acquired were valuable during the selection process.
Experience at Finmeccanica (Leonardo)
I was good, but I was also lucky: shortly after graduating, I found an ad for an important innovative project at Finmeccanica (the main Italian industrial group in the defense and aerospace technology sector, now known as Leonardo). It was a great opportunity: I was selected and assigned to the most challenging and ambitious project. Less than 12 months after joining as an intern, I became the team leader of a group of experts for the reorganization of a strategic procurement sector. I was lucky to find excellent mentors and became an expert in cost reduction and especially in contract negotiation and drafting.
I primarily worked on strategic supplies, but for a fun period, I also held the position of the group’s travel manager: it was very enjoyable, and I traveled a lot, learning a great deal of what would later be useful to me as a travel blogger.
However, I believe I am remembered by my former colleagues for when I quit because the job that had been promised to me was given to someone highly recommended. I resigned and spent a fantastic year-long sabbatical in Australia. What an adventure that was! When I returned, I was immediately rehired with a promotion and a salary increase.
Many roles with English titles ending in “Manager,” important projects, but the dream was shattered: I no longer fit into the environment. I had joined the most important Italian aerospace company, had the opportunity to visit many production plants, but in all those years, I never once found someone who spoke about space colonization. Finmeccanica was the best for Italy, but it wasn’t America, and there was no Elon Musk.
When I met the love of my life, I didn’t hesitate to choose her over a prestigious position in one of my country’s most respected companies: I resigned for the second time. All my friends said I was crazy. But I have never regretted it. Never.
Travel Blogger
My wife is German, and I moved to Germany: from Rome to a small village in Bavaria. The shock was immense. I almost instinctively decided to start over as a travel blogger, drawing on the many trips I had taken and especially on my previous experience as a travel manager. My being an engineer, my professional experience, and most importantly, my different approach to presenting myself online were the keys to an unexpected success: after uncertain beginnings and years of hard work, my first travel blog uberti.eu reached one million visits per year.
I managed to turn my passion for travel and discovering the world into a remunerative job that also allowed me plenty of free time to dedicate to the study of humanistic topics I hadn’t had time for before. Fantastic!
Unfortunately, everything crashed at the beginning of 2020: the poor handling of COVID destroyed in a few weeks a business I had painstakingly built over a decade. The disaster was evident in the first weeks, but the slow agony lasted four years. It was a severe psychological blow for me: not just for the existential problems caused by the sudden (and perhaps definitive) loss of my income but also, and especially, for the pain of witnessing how badly our society has declined.
I was fortunate because I had the support of my wife, but many others never recovered from that crisis. Prices have risen inexorably, and when it comes to travel, today, for many Italians, vacations are a luxury they can no longer afford. For too many other Italians, vacations aren’t even a consideration anymore: the real issue is how to feed their children. All of this in the cold indifference of those whose lives remain unaffected.
I found the strength and determination to rise again from this ruinous fall, but my thoughts go to all those who didn’t make it.
New Beginning
The truth is that I had already been feeling for some time that being just a travel blogger wasn’t enough: it was fun, but… I wanted to do more. Or rather: I wanted to do something more significant. Even better: I was trying to figure out how to achieve something more important and rewarding to complement my small independent travel business, whose results I didn’t want to abandon.
Then suddenly, the results disappeared, and I had no choice but to do something new. However, starting over after turning 45 is tough. Difficult. Especially when you live in a country that’s not your own, in a foreign culture, after having given up the “classic responsible engineer career” almost 15 years earlier. Still, I will never give up. And even today, I don’t regret leaving a secure and well-paid position to do something different.
To overcome the despair of seeing my earnings steadily decline and not knowing what to do to change the situation, I relied on my engineering education and my professional experience: experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.
The response to the income drop from my old travel site was to do more and do better: over the years, I’ve learned how to launch more modern and faster websites, and now, thanks to the support of Artificial Intelligence (see how I use it), I can translate everything into multiple languages and reach a vast international audience.
I am working on revamping uberti.eu to transform it into a more modern, up-to-date site that will be translated into 10 languages to better tell the stories and showcase the beauty of the main destinations in Italy and Europe.
But the novelty is that I won’t stop at travel: I am launching a series of websites on various seemingly unrelated topics, which in a few years will gain common coherence, like pieces of a mosaic. I have already put online the site sagaceacquisto.it, where I use my expertise in shopping and technology to provide useful advice on buying products and services online, and it will also be transformed into a multilingual site.
At the same time, I am working on launching social issue websites, where I discuss the risks of uncontrolled Artificial Intelligence development and several other topics. I am also dedicating significant attention to publishing a series of religious-themed websites, focused on important churches and cathedrals, as well as the art and symbolism of the Romanesque.
See the page on all my websites.
There are also more personal and socially relevant projects that I work on quietly behind the scenes, but I prefer not to discuss them publicly. I am convinced that my contribution will take shape in the long term, and the fruits of this work will become evident in the future.
As mentioned at the beginning, I believe that a man’s professional life is a meaningful reflection of his true qualities. But it’s not just about work. That’s why I invite you to also read:
If you are interested in what I publish online today, I invite you to follow me: Social and Contacts.
The cover image was created by me using Ideogram. See also how I use Artificial Intelligence.
I am an engineer passionate about travel, history, culture, and technology. I publish a series of websites on various topics: religion, travel, conscious buying advice, dangers of Artificial Intelligence, and reflections on the future of human society. Explore all my websites.