A "Great Future" Behind Me

This is the title of the biography of Vittorio Gassman, one of the greatest Italian actors.

We live our entire lives trying to follow our aspirations and dreams.

But rarely do we fulfill them.

Why?

Because time flies away at a supersonic speed!!!

When I was young, I was very gifted as a soccer player. Without false modesty, I really could have arrived at the top but, it didn't happen.

Why? Probably I didn't have the right character or attitude.

At the right moment, to be sincere, I was more attracted to beautiful girls than practicing hard every day. Also, for my bad character, I couldn't stand the insults from the spectators in the stands when we were playing away and, often, I was arguing with them, making things worse!!! Of course, this fact damaged my career.

I was, and still am, a decent artist but, I didn't become famous and have an Agent that could promote my work. Yes, I sold many things that I made but, not enough to make a living.

The thing that let me have a good living in Italy, was advertising, so, at least, I did well with that.

But, I always wanted to go to live in a tropical island and, probably, many of you wanted to do that but, talking about myself, I got very close to that and, without entering into a very personal past life, it didn't happen by a smidgen.

But, this constant effort to try to do that, in the end, frustrates our ambitions and, often, gives us the sensation that we're a………….failure!!!

On the other hand, I was very lucky that at 50 years old, I completely changed my life by moving to the USA and starting a new life. At that age the majority of people begin to think about slowing down and start to contemplate retirement. I did the opposite. At 50 I started a new life. This fact gave me an immense energy in order to rebuild and try to succeed.

I filled a "niche" that was lacking in this country: TEACHING SOCCER!!!!

I played at a very high level so, being able to analyze and break down what I was doing, I was able to create a teaching method in order to transfer my experience to young players. I had……..HUNDREDS of them, and a few of them ended up playing professionally. That was………something!!!!

I'm now 78, and my heart decided (unequivocally) that it was time to retire.

I entered into a very pleasant routine from 5am to 10pm. I love to do a sequence of: reading newspapers online from Italy and England, exercising (jogging and swimming), sometimes cooking, collecting old books from the 1800's, doing Italian crosswords, making art and then taking pictures of it for the website Gallery, writing (I published 2 books), preparing the material to send to my webmaster Josh Hinden (a good soccer player and my ex soccer student) to update the website that he patiently created. So, doing the above, my life rolls………..pleasantly livable.

But, I have a secret……………..

Instead of constantly trying to live the best I can, the solution is to try to live the least bad that I can. This is the secret. This simple fact, almost every day, can give me the sensation that I didn't………fail.

Thank you for reading!

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