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I’d love to start this very first blog post with a quote, wrongly ascribed to Lao Tzu, which runs like that...

I’d love to start this very first blog post with a quote, wrongly ascribed to Lao Tzu, which runs like that: “New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.“ If ever there was an appropriate quote, that is the most appropriate to describe what is like starting over from my perspective.

I got to the point of starting my new career as a surface pattern designer when everything seemed lost – health, money and job, all gone in few months. Due to my poor health state, I knew I could not go on and work for the State like I tried to do in the previous twenty years, driving long hours to reach an uncomfortable site where I had to stay for an unreasonably long time doing nothing relevant neither for me or my colleagues. Moreover, I was really tired of fighting for respect and consideration on my boss’ part.

Then came the diagnosis. According to that hand specialist, I was going to lose the use of my right hand. It was the end, the end of everything. He delivered that diagnosis laughing, as if it was nothing and, of course, he never dreamed of writing in on the certificate he handled me after being paid a lot (A LOT) of money. For me, it was like being hit by a cannonball. Doctors! They do not see how heavy are their words to those who suffer… For weeks I was in a trance – a bad one, I have to say. No painting, no writing, not even doing my daily chores at home. I had been forbidden to do everything that was my normality. I had been told to wear a wrist brace, so I started to use it and I am using it still now.

When shortly after, I was summoned to the medical commission appointed to judge my working abilities, I tried to state my reasons but they were deemed as irrelevant: I was fit to work. A severely slipped disc, scapholunate dissociation in the dominant hand, a serious form of fibromyalgia, a one-hour long drive to reach the working place and I was fit to work for the State despite my already stated 50% degree of working disability. This is what Italian bureaucracy is like. I will not mention how many lawyers and trade unionists and legal doctors I consulted: some took my money, some took my time, some kept me waiting for months before I realised they would never answer me and only one, only one among the multitude I had turned to told me I could do nothing at all. And so I resolved to quit my job. I did everything the way it should be done but, again, that was not an easy task: after all, it was always the Italian bureaucracy I had to deal with.

Unemployed, sick, with an inauspicious diagnosis and unable to spend my time doing what I like best: that was what my life was. Yet my stubborn will had the best. Can I not paint with my right hand? OK, I will do it with my left hand. Can I not paint at all? OK, I will use the PC. Can I not use my current mouse? OK, I will look for a better one. Am I unemployed? OK, I will be my own employer: surely I will be more sympathetic and open-minded and solution-prone than all the meagre bureaucracy performers I had encountered until now. And so, slowly but steadily, I started building the idea of starting a new adventure.

What am I like now? I am excited. I am curious. I am tired and aching like always. I am having problems with my hands and back and body in general. I am surprised at my own resilience. I am trying to stay clear of expectations. I am biding my time making what I like the most the way I can. But, most of all, I am totally unaware of what the future will be like. I ignore if this enterprise of mine will succeed or will sink into nothing like my previous one (see here to know more). The trade is new to me, the global conjuncture is difficult and I have no guarantees I will find clients. Like I always do, I have done all I could to gather information and prepare myself at my best before starting this LeftHandMade thing, so my conscience is all right. After all, like anybody else, I only answer about what is within my reach.

The false Lao Tzu was right: my beginning was indeed disguised as a painful ending. So, in order to pay tribute to this unknown wise found on the web, let me add here another false Lao Tzu’s quote as a good omen: “Your own positive future begins in this moment. All you have is right now. Every goal is possible from here.“ and hope for the best.

* This post was written in April 2023, when I was confident that I could start my activity very early. Unfortunately, the Italian bureaucracy had the best and I had to postpone, thus facing all kinds of worries. I hope this post will become real at the beginning of 2024.
 I decided to continue to write on the blog even if I had not started working as a designer in order to be able to offer content once I wuold officially start.