When my father passed, a few years back, something shifted. First a sentence, then a paragraph, and eventually, a private elegy. Perhaps you’ve felt it too—muscles you’ve forgotten you have, until something asks you to use them again.
A family trade, unspoken but inherited
I come from a family where language was always present. Journalists, editors, foreign correspondents, travel writers. My father was one of the finest journalists of his generation. My brother took his own path through the same forest. My mother was a TV director and producer. At the dinner table, books were quoted, stories argued, and precision was expected. Writing wasn’t a performance. It was an ethic.
The rhythm of a sentence, the discipline of a thought, the taste of irony—these weren’t lessons. They were habits of attention.
Dad, on the Silk Road
The long pause
When I stopped writing in my early thirties, it wasn’t a crisis. Quite the opposite. I was building a life. The kind of life that moves fast and rewards momentum. After graduate school I heeded the best advice I ever received (“leave politics for the afternoon”), moved to London, started working for an Oil and Gas Major, got married, rebuilt a farmhouse on the Baltic Sea, and spent a lot of time on airplanes.
Time was scarce, boredom not an issue. My work took me from London to the Middle East, Central Asia, and eventually to Russia, where I lived for five years at a time when things were dynamic, rewarding, and very real. It was a career that brought with it global exposure, high-stakes financial decision making, quite a bit of geopolitics, and no shortage of fascinating contradictions.
Writing wasn’t needed then.
In my Moscow office….and yes, that was an espresso machine
America, horses, and the return to language
In 2015 I discovered horses - the full tale is here - and what began as a western adventure became a new life. I moved to Montana in 2016, built a small horse ranch, then moved to Texas in 2022, built another ranch.
I was seeking space both literal and metaphorical. Over time, horses became not just companions but collaborators, unspoken partners in a broader conversation about trust, clarity, and attention. That shift changed how I listened and how I thought, how I coached.
The need to write built slowly, shaped by these landscapes. It offered a quiet counterweight to the long hours spent with horses, where expression is non-verbal.
What drew me back was a recognition, gradual but insistent, that ideas need form. I coach people through change. I listen to what’s said, and what isn’t. I sit quietly next to horses. I walk clients through uncertainty. And what I’ve learned is this: with people, clarity often begins where writing starts. Language became a way to crystallize what I was seeing. And eventually, a way to offer it, too.
With Stevie, one of my horses, in Texas
So why Substack now?
Because the best conversations I’ve had in recent years weren’t on stages or in Zoom rooms. They happened quietly, over coffee, in pastures, in post-session emails. They dealt with risk, satisfaction, doubt, performance, the space between clarity and confusion, the uncertainty of what’s next.
And more often than not, they were about the stories we carry: how we define ourselves, what we believe about growth, and the silent scripts that shape how we lead. This space is where I’ll keep those conversations going. Publicly, slowly, and without packaging.
It’s true that you can’t come home again. But some returns aren’t reversals. They’re continuations.
What’s in it for you?
You won’t find a lead magnet here. No 5-step protocols. No funnels. Just essays, a couple of times a month, on the things that stay with us long after a good conversation ends. You’ll find ideas here that might sharpen your thinking, reframe a tired concept, or name something you’ve felt but haven’t put into words.
An ounce of psychology, a dose of neuroscience, a sprinkle of philosophy. A few references to good films and old books. Reminiscences of Sicilian food. A shimmer of Bruce Springsteen stardust. At times, some number crunching. Occasionally, some references to the public discourse. And, horses, plenty of horses.
If that sounds like a rhythm you’d want to read alongside, I’d be honored to have you here.
Subscription is free. Conversation is the point.
— Federico