No one knows that, at the age of 17, in the midst of adolescent confusion, I wrote a book. A novel.
It was a significant effort, in the end the book approached 100 pages! I recall it took me several months to write. It was never published or distributed, except amongst a few close friends at that time.
At one point, I even lost it, only to surprisingly retrieve it five years later from one of these friends who particularly liked it and had kept a copy who knows where.
The book used a third-person narrative and a fictional main character, but in truth, it was nothing more than a somewhat accurate portrayal of my life back then, mixed with my romantic fantasies.
I never opened or read it again, primarily due to the embarrassment I felt about my younger self. That was, until last week.
There are so, so many things that I had completely forgotten, including this passage:
His dream is to see his program, his — what's it called? — software, on the shelves of big stores. I don't know much about it, but from what I can tell, he really knows what he's doing. Apparently, he's been programming since second grade.
It's nice to see that I've achieved the dream of my younger self. I didn't believe that it was already a dream of mine so soon, and so clearly.
It's also incredible to realize that, at the core, nothing has truly changed. I'm a bit more confident in myself, I know myself a little better, I have a bit more experience, I'm much less judgmental towards myself and others... but for the rest, my essence is exactly the same as it was 20 years ago. Despite all the internal work I've tried to do for a lifetime.
I spent a few hours converting it from PDF to epub, correcting some leftover typos. I don't expect it to be interesting to anyone, but it's here, available for download. Obviously, it's in Italian.
