Today I want to digress a little.

When I started working, I had a very small budget for, well, everything. I remember always buying the cheapest possible flight — even if it meant sleeping at the airport for a 4am departure. I remember going to the supermarket before trips to stock up on ready-made food so I wouldn't be tempted to order takeout when I got home. I remember never going to a bakery alone — only with friends — because eating out without company felt like wasting money. Taxis? I wouldn't dare. Clothes? Maximum Zara. You get the idea.

A lot has changed since then — and also, honestly, not that much. My lifestyle hasn't transformed dramatically. Italy has a way of making sure of that; the wheels here turn at their own pace, taxes do what taxes do, and the gap between what you earn on paper and what actually lands in your account can be its own particular kind of meditation on patience. But I'm not here to talk about my frustrations with finances.

• I'm here to talk about what has actually changed. Which is smaller, and more important.

This morning, I was eating a brioche at the bakery before going to the gym, and it struck me: three years ago, I would never have done this. Not alone, anyway. Now it's become one of my favourite rituals — whenever I manage to wake up early enough for a Sunday gym session, I reward myself first with a big coffee and something sweet at the bakery. It's a small thing. It's also, genuinely, one of the things I look forward to most each Sunday.

These are not big changes. No new house bought, no dramatic lifestyle upgrade, no sudden sense of having arrived somewhere. But somewhere along the way, I started giving myself these small moments — little pockets of pleasure built into the ordinary rhythm of the week — and they have made my days genuinely happier. Not in a grand, transformative way. In a quiet, reliable, this is mine kind of way.

• Charlie Chaplin once said: "Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot." The idea being that individual struggles feel overwhelming up close, but viewed from a distance they shrink, and sometimes even become funny.

I think about that quote quite often — and then I keep wanting to flip it. Because for me, it works the other way around too: life can feel frustrating in the regular shot, in the medium view of Italian salaries, tight timelines, and expectations not quite being met. But when you zoom in — really close — it becomes something else entirely. A brioche on a Sunday morning. A pizza after a long journey home. The small, specific pleasures you've built for yourself without quite noticing.

I think that's what Italy has taught me lately. The value of finding beauty in the small things when the big things are taking a little longer than anticipated.

That's where the beauty is, in the end. Not in the long shot, and not in spite of the close-up — but because of it.

I wonder what Chaplin would say.

With love,
Micael.