Being Geek Chic is a blog about one woman navigating the male-dominated industries of production and tech. It's written by Elizabeth Giorgi, Founder, CEO and Director of Mighteor - one of the world's first internet video production companies. Learn more about Mighteor here.
I am a different person right now. Different from a year ago. Different from 6 months ago. Different from 60 days ago. I have getting completely, totally, frighteningly lost in Italy to thank.
Imagine this: I get on a train at Milani Garibaldi on a Thursday afternoon heading to a piazza that is supposed to be on one of the old canals of Milano. The pictures I had seen on various travel blogs made it seem like the inspiration for a scene in a Disney movie - how could I not go?
It’s a beautiful northern Italian day. Low 80s. Hardly a single cloud in the sky. Less humid than usual. I’m in my trademark black outfit. Skinny black jeans. Unusually hemmed black tee. Black sunnies. I pull up some directions to this beloved location on Google Maps and I confirm with the train conductor to see if I’m headed in right direction. When he assures me, I waste no time buying the ticket and boarding the train.
Alt-J in my ears, I zone out for 5 stops, careful to listen for the familiar bing noise that comes over the speaker right before arriving at the next station. One. Bing. Two. Bing. Three. Bing. Four. Bing. Five. Bing. Get up and get off that train. Transportation is simultaneously the hardest and most universal thing about travel.
When I get off the tracks, I put my music away so I can pay attention to the careful directions I read online when I still had WiFi. No WiFi anywhere here. Believe me, I check. Incessantly. To the point where my phone battery is almost dead from scanning for hot spots. Instead, I must rely on my memory and gut instincts. Go right, past the fields of green and then turn right when you see a bus stop. There should be a T in the road.
After 25 minutes of walking and no right turns and no Ts in the road, I knew something was up. Sweaty from that 80 degree sun that no longer felt delightful and completely alone in the middle of nowhere, I started laughing. I was trying not to panic. I was desperate not to cry. I was hoping I wasn’t getting wickedly sunburned. Every single degree of the 360 degrees of space around me was just grass. Dying, beat down, fields of grass making way for autumn as summer slowly passed.
Where in the actual hell was I?
Totally lost.
It was just a field. Surrounded by empty nothing. I had walked so far, I couldn’t even see the train station anymore. This place was so random, so remote, that it could have easily been the set for an abandoned farming plot of a lost community out of a dystopian novel. So now what? Seriously, now what? There was no one to ask. There was no using my smartphone. There was only walking back.
So I started walking back.
Here’s my advice: If you have never forced yourself to be ALONE, truly alone, for at least three days - you MUST do it.
And here’s why.
When you are forced to spend that much time alone (or in my case, 34 days alone), you are forced to see your life from a new perspective. You are forced to see yourself from a new perspective. Ideally, you’ll be so far from home that your phone won’t operate properly so you can’t reach out for comfort when you get lonely. You’ll be so committed to this journey that you won’t allow yourself to pay the exorbitant data fees for using your phone. And hopefully, you’ll be ready, even if you aren’t ready. And you might get lost. Actually, you will probably get lost. It will suck. It will be scary. But it is the big fish you have been trying to catch. It is the thing you were looking for and didn’t even know it. Because when you reel that in, you can see what you were hoping was on the line.
Maybe that metaphor is out of control, so let’s put it more simply: Even though limited access to my phone, loneliness, unconnectedness and fear were the very things that bit me in the ass when I was standing out in the middle of that field, they were also the things that forced me to dig deep and actually see myself. Not a reflection. An inflection. An inner observation of my real worth. My real strength. My real will.
I walked the long ass walk back to the train station and waited for a train headed back to Milano.
I never found the piazza. I did find a bit of myself.
Editor’s note: At Being Geek Chic, we believe being a geek and being a chic woman can be synonymous. When Gemma asked if she could provide her top tips for feeling like a fab geek, well, we had to oblige. Thanks, Gemma, for your excellent guest post!
Low self-esteem is something which can affect all of us at some point in our lives. Everyone has ‘bad days’ where we don’t quite feel our best, especially if you find your nerd status causes people to treat you differently. But it’s not always a love of Harry Potter that causes the problem. (Actually, that’s never the problem…)
Sometimes the issue is more deep-rooted and can have an impact on our career and relationships. However, there are lots of things you can do to boost your confidence and achieve all the things you want to in life. (While still being a nerd, of course!)
There are no quick-fix solutions and the process can be a long one, but here’s my nerd-friendly guide to feeling fabulous:
1. Surround yourself with other nerds who make you feel happy.
Making sure you spend time with people who appreciate you and make you feel good about yourself can be an important part of our feeling of self-worth. There’s no point hanging out with someone who puts you down or makes you feel insecure about yourself. Sometimes all it takes is a friend to tell you how great you are looking to give you confidence boost throughout the day. (Especially if that friend says things like: You’re as smart as Hermione and as beautiful as Arwen.)
If you’re feeling down, try visualising yourself through the eyes of a loved one and pick up all the good points they see in you.
2. Make some “me” time to enjoy the things you love.
Yeah, sometimes grown up life sucks. Work and family responsibilities can make it difficult to make time for yourself. However, little things like taking yourself on a shopping trip for some new geeky tees or getting a tough new haircut can really improve your confidence levels. Try hitting the gym for a boost of endorphins. It’s science! And those happy chemicals will make you feel better about yourself.
3. Don’t spend time on the dark side. Or, just eliminate negativity.
Sometimes negativity can come from other people (those people suck), but more often than not, we imprint negativity on ourselves. Try to adopt a mantra of positivity (like your own personal patronus), which you can take with you through your day. This may be difficult at first but there are lots of self-help guides online about improving confidence which are available to make this easier. A happy Weasley approach to life is likely to bring you more success and happiness than one which is filled with negativity.
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Guest post by Gemma Collier is a mum of one and lover of all things vintage. She works part-time as a personal shopper, but when she’s not working she loves writing, playing dress-up with her little girl and curling up with a good book. She also loves to play games on bgo.com
