“Nothing had been resolved. But for that morning, nothing needed to be.”
A couple of days before leaving for Italy, I made a decision.
Work had been slowing down for some time. The opportunities weren’t coming like they had before, my income was suffering, and the frustration had been building.
I had financial goals I was working toward, and lately it felt like I was moving farther away from them.
Now I was about to leave the country for eleven days.
The timing couldn’t have been much worse.
I found myself thinking about the work I might miss, the money I wouldn’t earn, and whether taking this much time away would only make an already frustrating situation worse.
I had even started considering whether it was time to find another job.
But there was something else bothering me.
Eleven days traveling through parts of Europe I had never experienced. A trip I had been looking forward to. A much-needed break from the daily grind.
And I was about to let everything happening at home come along with me.
I could already imagine myself checking emails, thinking about work, worrying about the opportunities I might be missing.
I could be standing somewhere I had never been, surrounded by things I had never seen, and still have my mind cluttered with the same frustrations I had left behind.
And what would it change?
Nothing.
There was very little I could do about the situation while I was gone. Whatever needed to be addressed would still be there when I returned.
So I decided to separate the two.
For eleven days, I wasn’t going to think about work.
No emails. No calls. No texts. No meetings. No conversations about what was going wrong or what I needed to do next.
I would deal with those things when I came home.
Until then, I wanted to be wherever I was.
The morning after arriving in Italy, we walked through a quieter part of Trieste.
Away from the crowds and the places tourists usually gathered, we found a small coffee shop near the top of a steep cobblestone street.
There were a couple of tables and chairs outside. Inside, the space was small but warm, with an open door that seemed to invite people to come and go as they pleased.
It was the kind of place that belonged to the neighborhood.
I ordered a cappuccino and a cream-filled croissant, and we found a place to sit outside.
I remember watching the morning unfold around us.
Mopeds zipped past, making their way down the steep hill. People walked their dogs. Others passed with headphones in, taking their morning stroll. Parents pushed children in strollers along the cobblestone pathway.
People came and went from the coffee shop.
Some stayed for a while. Others stopped just long enough for a coffee and a conversation.
The door remained open, and people spoke to one another from both sides of it. Someone standing outside might exchange a few words with someone inside before continuing on.
There was a familiarity among them, even if they didn’t all know one another.
A man sat down at a table across from me.
He had a newspaper, a cappuccino, and a cigarette.
He settled into his chair, opened the paper, and began reading.
Every so often, he would take a drag from his cigarette. I watched the ember glow brighter as he inhaled, his eyes never leaving the newspaper he held in both hands.
He would lower the cigarette, take another sip of his coffee, and continue reading.
By the time I left, he’d smoked several.
He seemed perfectly content to sit there.
And so was I.
There was something about the morning that felt different.
Nobody appeared to be in much of a hurry. Conversations happened naturally. People acknowledged one another as they passed.
I didn’t see people sitting around staring into their phones.
They were talking. Reading. Drinking coffee. Going about their day.
It reminded me of a way of life that seemed more common in the past.
Before so much of our attention was directed toward screens. Before every quiet moment seemed to need filling with something.
A little less distraction.
A little more interaction.
Maybe I was only seeing a small part of life in this neighborhood. I knew nothing about the worries these people carried or what the rest of their days might look like.
But what I could see felt different from much of what I had grown accustomed to.
And something about it felt right.
Almost familiar, even though I hadn’t experienced much of it in my own life.
I remember thinking that I could get used to mornings like this.
I could definitely wake up and get my coffee here every day.
I finished my cappuccino.
But I wasn’t ready to leave.
So I walked back inside and ordered another.
We sat there talking, watching people come and go, enjoying a morning that seemed to have no particular destination.
It was Monday.
Just another ordinary morning for the people who lived there.
But for me, there was something about it I didn’t want to lose.
Over the next eleven days, I would visit Croatia, Greece and the Greek islands, and spend several days exploring Turkey.
There were incredible places to see. Streets I had never walked, landscapes I had never imagined seeing in person, and experiences I was grateful to have.
And I enjoyed all of it.
I kept the promise I had made before leaving.
I didn’t check my work emails. I didn’t take calls or respond to texts. I didn’t attend meetings or involve myself in conversations about work.
For those eleven days, I was completely disconnected.
The problems I had been worrying about before leaving hadn’t been resolved. I still had financial goals to reach. Work would still need my attention when I returned.
But I wasn’t carrying those things around with me.
I could enjoy a place without thinking about what I needed to accomplish when I left it.
I could have a conversation without my mind drifting toward work.
I could spend an entire day exploring somewhere new without feeling guilty about what I wasn’t doing somewhere else.
I was simply there.
Yet when I think back on the trip, after all the places we visited and everything we experienced, my thoughts keep returning to that morning outside the little coffee shop in Trieste.
I’ve wondered why.
There was nothing particularly remarkable about it.
No famous landmark. No extraordinary experience. Nothing that would have stood out to anyone passing by.
Just a man reading his newspaper. Mopeds making their way down a hill. People walking their dogs, stopping for coffee, exchanging a few words before going on with their day.
An ordinary Monday morning.
And maybe that was what stayed with me.
For the people living there, it was simply life.
They weren’t trying to make the morning into something memorable. They were just living it.
And for a little while, I was doing the same.
I spend a lot of time thinking about the future.
What I want to build. Where I want to go. How much money I need to make. What I need to accomplish to create the kind of life I imagine for myself.
There always seems to be something I’m working toward.
And I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing.
But sometimes I wonder how much of my attention those future possibilities take away from the life I’m already living.
How often am I physically somewhere while my thoughts are occupied with something else?
How many ordinary mornings have I overlooked because I was too focused on what needed to happen next?
I think back to that man with his newspaper.
He may have been worried about something. He may have had a difficult day ahead of him. There was no way for me to know.
But in that moment, he was sitting outside with his coffee, reading the news and smoking his cigarette.
And I was sitting across from him, enjoying a morning I hadn’t expected to mean anything to me.
Neither of us was doing anything particularly important.
At least not in the way I usually think about importance.
Yet that simple morning has stayed with me longer than some of the extraordinary things I experienced on the trip.
I had spent weeks worrying about work before leaving, and I knew those concerns would be waiting when I returned.
But I had decided not to let them take these eleven days from me.
I didn’t need to be farther ahead financially or have my next professional move figured out.
Things back home weren’t going according to plan.
But I could sit outside a coffee shop, drink another cappuccino, and enjoy being there.
Nothing had been resolved.
But for that morning, nothing needed to be.
I don’t know if I’ll ever sit outside that little coffee shop again.
But of all the places I visited and everything I experienced, it’s that ordinary Monday morning I keep returning to.
Not because of anything that happened.
But because, for a little while, I was exactly where I wanted to be.
-G.Hudkins
Continue The Journey
Somewhere Else — August 2026
On freedom, possibility, and the constant pull toward what comes next.
Repayment — July 2026
On the pressure to keep building, the guilt of resting, and learning to value the moments already here.