Today I was totally sure it was Saturday.
That’s a bad sign – losing the perception of time when your life becomes a continuum of

Wake up
Sit at the PC and write
Prepare lunch
Sit at the PC and write
Prepare dinner
Sit at the PC and write
Go to sleep

Add to this increasing panic attacks as soon as my mind gets off the work at hand, and this month is really being hell.
And there’s this voice at the back of my head mocking me… *oh, so you wanted the life of the pulp writers of old, uh? Well, chump, I hope you’re enjoying the ride!”

And indeed, one of the worst bits of all this is losing the enjoyment I usually got out of writing. It’s turning into a chore, and that’s bad.
Not only because writing pays the bills, but because writing to me always was fun.
So I decided I’ll take a vacation.
A short, cheap¹ but much needed vacation – I booked a guided tour of the area where I live. We’ll be taking it the next weekend.

This looks like a no-brainer, now that the booking’s done, but really… I lived in Turin for forty-two years and the first time I took a guided tour of the town was shen I was thirty-five, because I was chaperoning a Japanese friend.
And yes, some places I did know better than the back of my hand, like the Egyptian Museum, but other places I did not know.
But we are born in the place, right, so we assume we know the lay of the land. We are natives.
And in part it is true: indeed, when I was six or seven the school took us on tours of the city, and the museums, but then funds were cut and nothing happened anymore.

So now I live in the hills of Astigianistan, and yet I miss a lot of stuff.
So I’ll play the tourist, taking my brother along for the ride.
The tour is organized by a nice agency, with whom we already visited the Templar places in the territory, and it was a great day.
This time, we’ll visit the beautiful medieval/renaissance village of Incisa Alta (actually just two miles from where we live), taking a look at two gorgeous churches and the local castle.
And then we’ll explore the nooks and crannies of Nizza Monferrato (five miles away), the major center in the area. We’ll hit museums and art galleries and all the rest – including the Museum of Distillation and the Museum of Sugar.

It’s going to be a different weekend, one me and my brother will take only for ourselves.
We’ll be tourists, shooting the vistas and having fun, meeting new people and pushing work and problems and bills and the bank and all the rest away from our minds for a while.
We might close the day with a pizza at the local kebab place, and as we are at it, celebrate my birthday.
Then life will start again, but we’ll be better.
I’ll find pleasure in writing again, and maybe I’ll find new ways to pay our bills.
And I’ll make my life a little longer.

But really, think about it: no matter where you live, no matter how deep is your knowledge of the place, of its history and art… book a guided tour and take one or two days off.