📸 The real vision board: '24/'25💥

Hello hello :)

On the last day of 2025, I am happy to share the real vision board that inspired my book "Italian dream".

💥 The real vision board & Lia's story

All my life, I always gathered pictures and posts its in vision boards, to make sure I remembered where I came from and where I wanted to go. I did this in high school, university and even during work: a lot of people do, but I did it in an obsessive way.

This is why, when I had the chance to write my book, I thought of having a main character - Lia - that does exactly the same thing: collecting her dreams in a vision board.

Below, I collected for you an instant for every month of 2025 and 2024 so you could see my journey which hasn't always been easy, but I loved every step of it. There's also a 25th polaroid, which you can find on the cover of my book, which is an artwork I made using AI :)

I added also, under the pictures, the songs that became basically my motto during those two years.

📸 The end of the two year vision board: 2025

📷 The beginning of the two year vision board: 2024

📍 The 25 instants & The advent's calendar

If you want to see Lia's vision board, instead, you can find it on Pintrest under Italian dream /Advent's calendar. I created this folder to collect pictures that reminded me of each of the 25 instants described by Lia in the book and it's publically available.

🖼️ The 25th polaroid of my personal vision board: The book cover

As mentioned, the 25th polaroid is missing from my personal vision board because it can be found on my book's cover. I made the book cover my using Canova's Venus Italica and covering her with AI code with the dates of the Italian dream so far. Lastly, I framed everything in a polaroid, because it needs to fit in the vision board with the others. Why do you think I chose the Venus italica? Well, I guess because "omnia vincit Roma" - no, sorry "omnia vincit Amor". It's an artwork done for someone else, who inspired (and still inspires) me deeply with his unwavering faith in goodness and willingness to protect me even at his worst. If I was able to work so hard on my ideas so that they will flourish in Italy in 2026, it's thanks to his fiery faith too.

Something else that inspires me is also the difference between Gatsby and Nero: one is American, the other Italian. One is like an eclipse, the other one is the fire that shines in the dark. One is able to do impossible things to win Daisy's attention, his lost mutual love from his youth. Nero, on the other hand, loudly burns down Rome just to build something innovative, something golden that will shine in the dark of eternity like the "Domus aurea".

🖤 Let's capture the moment also in 2026

I am still wondered a lot in 2025 about which one of these two characters, the silent hero searching for a lost mutual love, or the flamboyant knight defending beauty, is more Venusian. I guess the only way to know is to keep living in the moment: no past achievement or ambitious plan for the future can match the wonderful feeling of an instant full of love. That's really all that matters.

This is why, for now, I'll just continue to seize the day in 2026 by making memories and writing down notes of new visions, to be collected in a board like Lia (the main character of my book) does in "Italian dream".

🍾 Happy new year!

The book cover on my pc desktop while I am working on the new blog stuff for next year, picture taken at the end fo 2025. You can see a bunch of random stuff like letters from my friends, pictures and even a Sadie Jean autograph because she's the sweetest (and I love her songs so so much, especially "October 25th" and "The locksmith").

Love from Venice (Italy),

Elena