Put it on in a vintage car with soft rain outside, and even a happy relationship somehow resonates with the melancholy of it. Let alone one that has directly suffered from the thing called love.

Lately I have put myself — through direct experience, and through a good deal of introspection and research — into the question of what has actually happened to modern love. Not just dating. The meaning of the word overall.

Because if economic dependence has largely been erased from the list of reasons one must find a partner to provide for them; if there is a subversion of masculine and feminine energy disrupting the traditional roles; and if we now have extreme exposure to romantic possibility through nothing more than scrolling and swiping — then what does the word love actually mean anymore?

Which led me to a friend whose character I respected, and was intrigued by, from our first few encounters.

Pim — Jindaporn Jayangkura — is a content creator working with a discerning lifestyle brand alongside her husband, Arm Korakot Unphanit, who is the reason I met her in the first place. The story of these two caught my attention. They met at a media publishing company, and though they were working for different publications, fate — if I may say it — brought the two writers together.

Before that, Pim wrote for Cleo: a women’s lifestyle publication with a large part of it devoted to relationships between people.

So with all the questions I have accumulated — all the burning curiosity about everything that seems absurd in the realm of love, modernity, and the relationships between people — I believed a conversation with her would reveal something I had overlooked. Or give me a perspective I had not yet considered.

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Patrick:

At this point in your life, what do you think love is?

Pim:

It’s a feeling — a positive feeling we have toward another person. I don’t see love as something that exists only between a man and a woman, or only in romance. Love is almost like matter that can change form and seep into everything. Sometimes you can feel love toward someone you don’t even know, without wanting anything in return.

Romantic love becomes more complicated because passion and other feelings get mixed into it. I’ve never felt a strong need to define it precisely. People understand the feeling in their own way. But we often mix love with other things — with possession — and that’s normal too. It rarely exists in a perfectly isolated form.

Patrick:

Do you believe in the idea of the one — a single person who is your only true life partner?

Pim:

I once read Only Love Is Real by Brian Weiss. The idea, as I remember it, is that a therapist works with two people through past-life regression and discovers that their paths seem to connect across lives. They may not always be lovers; they could have been parent and child, or had some other relationship. It raises the idea that perhaps there is someone we keep meeting.

But personally, I don’t take the idea of one lifelong one very seriously. Maybe some people meet a person and stay with them for their entire life — their first and last love. For me, if there is such a thing, that person might be the one for a particular period of your life. The person who is right for you at twenty might not be the same person who is right for you at thirty.

What matters to me is commitment within that period. I don’t mean having two people at the same time and saying you can’t choose. I mean that for that chapter, you are the one for each other. I don’t need the concept to be bigger than that.

Why make life harder by insisting there must be one perfectly correct person for all time?

Patrick:

Timing feels like one of the most painful factors, because it matters so much and we cannot control it. Many of the women I have seriously liked have already been in a relationship. How do you see the relationship between love and timing?

Pim:

Timing matters in everything, not only relationships. If my husband and I had met five years earlier, we might not have had this kind of relationship. It might not have lasted this long. We might not even have liked each other. Things have their own fit and their own timing. We don’t always need to understand why. Sometimes the answer is simply: right now, it isn’t right.

When you’re young it’s easy to think — it has to be this person, and if not, who will I ever meet? But life is long. You don’t know who you’ll meet later. Maybe one day you’ll meet someone you like even more, and that person will fit the kind of relationship you’ve been waiting for.

I also think most people get stuck in some kind of relationship pattern for a while. In your case, maybe the women you’re drawn to share certain characteristics. Did you know they had partners before you liked them, or did you find out afterward?

There may be some common trait or factor that attracts you. If you can identify and interrupt that pattern, maybe you get out of the loop. I can’t tell you what the pattern is — that might take someone trained to explore it, or you might simply learn your way out of it over time. I had my own loop and eventually came out of it without realising. Again, it came back to seeing how I myself had changed.

Patrick:

I actually tried breaking down my own cases, and even used AI to look for common traits. The pattern it gave me was something like: urban, intellectual yet also socially connected, exposed to many people, broadly attractive, high self-awareness.

And then I thought — if that’s the type I’m drawn to, what are the odds they’ll be single, or overlooked? At my age, many people with those qualities are already in stable relationships. That’s why timing feels so frustrating. It’s outside my control.

Pim: But the timing isn’t right doesn’t mean you surrender. Not everyone you like will always have a partner. Someone might become single later — though by then you might not like them anymore. And you haven’t met everyone in the world.

You also don’t know what another couple’s relationship is really like. Some people look deeply in love from the outside when the relationship has already broken down. These things can’t always be judged by visible rules. A lot of it is emotional, and takes time to understand.

Patrick:

Why do people feel lonely in huge cities like Bangkok, New York, or Tokyo, where they are surrounded by people all the time?

Pim:

I’ll answer this as my own opinion, not as an expert. I don’t think loneliness is automatically dangerous. It happens. It looks especially strange in a busy city because there are people everywhere, so you think you shouldn’t be lonely. If you were alone in rural Scandinavia with a cow, people would think loneliness made sense. In a city, the contrast is more visible.

I think loneliness can even have a healthy side. Society trains us to connect constantly — to connect with the world, share things, go live, meet people, do activities. When we are trained to have connection all the time, we can forget how to be alone. Then the moment we are alone, we think: I’m lonely. Maybe we have forgotten how to spend time with ourselves.

I talk a lot about checking in with yourself, because today’s version of you and tomorrow’s version are already slightly different. In my thirties I became much more aware that I need to keep updating my understanding of myself. What do I think now? How do I feel about this now? I’m not the same person I was at twenty, or even five months ago. We change constantly, and sometimes I surprise myself by discovering I now feel differently about something.

I personally don’t get lonely very often. I need a lot of private time. I can love being with my husband and still be happy when we’re apart, because I get time for myself. Loneliness isn’t necessarily bad if you know how to be lonely — if you can sit with it rather than immediately treating it as an emergency.

Patrick:

For me, working for myself, the downside is that I can go an entire day without seeing anyone. I work, I finish in the evening, the sky gets dark, the room gets quiet — and I suddenly realise I haven’t really talked to or shared anything with anyone all day. A friend of mine works in an office and still experiences the same thing when he comes home. We may have plenty of followers and contacts, but we don’t necessarily call or message them.

Pim:

I experienced something similar when I became a freelancer. I came from the Cleo office, which was incredibly noisy and social. We shouted across the room, gossiped, joked, talked all day. When I started working from home, I missed having female coworkers to talk to. I felt lonely in that sense too.

But I was also an only child, and had always liked being alone in my room, in my own corner. So I gradually adjusted. Maybe having Arm, someone I can talk to about anything, helps. But I still think this kind of loneliness is normal. You feel lonely because you haven’t connected with anyone.

If the loneliness truly felt unbearable, maybe you would build a community, or join something. But sometimes we feel lonely and still remain with it, because we don’t actually want just any substitute. We may already have a specific picture in our heads — perhaps we think the only cure is a partner, not simply joining an activity.

I’ve tried joining clubs and it never really worked for me. I’m probably introverted, although I’m not someone who refuses to talk to people. I just don’t usually start. Being in organised social groups can feel psychologically exhausting. Even a book club sounds terrible to me: I like reading, but I don’t want to finish a book and then sit in a circle analysing it. I read it, I finish it, I move on. That taught me something about myself.

So maybe you sometimes enjoy part of your loneliness without realising it. You can be lonely without it destroying you. And everyone relieves it differently. For one person, chatting is enough. Another needs to meet face to face. Someone else may actually like the lonely feeling. There isn’t one method for everyone.

Patrick:

There’s a line in Green Book: “The world’s full of lonely people afraid to make the first move.” What do you think people are afraid of? Two lonely people might be sitting near each other, both wanting connection, and neither approaches.

Pim:

Maybe rejection. You might think — what if the other person doesn’t want to talk to me? Then you decide you shouldn’t bother them. But I also think it can simply become a habit. If you’ve been alone for a long time, you get used to not approaching people.

An extrovert can walk into a place, talk to people, make friends easily. An introvert often thinks through everything: What should I say? Is this topic okay? Can I share something personal yet?

Sometimes loneliness isn’t strong enough to beat anxiety, or the comfort of the safe zone. Loneliness itself can become a safe zone. You’re lonely, yes — but staying quiet feels safer than talking to someone and not knowing what will happen.

Patrick:

What should a single person do then, if timing is important and largely uncontrollable? Do you believe in actively searching for love, or in living your life well and letting it arrive when it arrives?

Pim:

I strongly believe in living your life. I say that because I spent so much of my own life chasing love. Then one day I stopped needing to chase it — not because I decided I never wanted love again, but because I realised I had other things to do. And that was around the time things changed.

But stopping the chase doesn’t mean love appears immediately. It has its own timing.

I believe that when you live your life instead of constantly hunting, you eventually meet what is genuinely yours. If you are always searching desperately, you may grab something that isn’t actually right for you. But I understand why not everyone can relax about it. A single friend can still ask every day: why am I still single? And I can’t answer that. Nobody can give a simple answer.

Patrick:

When you say chasing can feel like struggling too hard — does that include dating apps? Is being on one a form of desperation?

Pim:

No. I think whichever route you take, you’ll meet someone when you are meant to meet them.

Imagine two routes reaching the same destination at the same time. On one, you run the whole way and arrive exhausted. On the other, you sit in a car and do something else along the way. The destination might be the same, but your internal experience is completely different.

That’s the difference I care about. One person can be single and think: I’m okay, I can be alone, I even like being single. Another can think: I hate being single, am I the only single person left, is something wrong with me, am I strange? The behaviour can look similar. The feeling inside is different.

Dating apps are just tools. Instagram can function like a dating app too. Using one doesn’t automatically look desperate to me. Trying too hard is about your emotional state, not the behaviour itself.

Patrick:

I use the word elegant a lot. Is there such a thing as navigating love elegantly? What would it mean to approach it with grace?

Pim:

For me, searching for love elegantly isn’t about refusing to chase, or following some perfect rule. Whether you search actively, don’t search, or struggle a little — the most elegant thing is to be yourself.

Be yourself is difficult to define, but I think authenticity in love is the most graceful approach, because it means you value yourself.

Don’t try to become the person you think someone else will like. That is ultimately less important than whether you like yourself. Whether or not you have a partner, you are the person you have to live with for your whole life. If I had to live as someone I disliked, just because another person liked that version of me, I couldn’t accept it.

You are also the person who looks back at your own life. Other people aren’t sitting around thinking about what Patrick was like last year — but you may think about who you were yesterday, or ten years ago.

So showing your real self is one of the best things you can give yourself.

Every time I have a conversation with Pim, it provides a novel perspective while holding a similar tone. A little contrast. A worldview that contradicts my own, but stays open enough to provoke thought rather than close it down.

For this conversation — the longest we have had — it took a few days of reflection before a name arrived.

Archibald Alec Leach. Or, as you know him, Cary Grant.

The man from Bristol, whose whole life can be read as an act of becoming someone else. He changed his name. He tweaked his accent and his speech patterns. He engineered his body language. He described pretending to be the man he wanted to be until, as he put it, “he became me.” And he became one of the icons of elegance of the twentieth century.

At first, Pim’s conclusion on navigating love elegantly — to ‘be yourself’ — seems to contradict the entire existence of that man.

But consider that in his fifties, Grant spent years in psychiatric therapy — including roughly a hundred supervised LSD sessions — trying to find himself. And that in the realm of love, it took four divorces before he settled, finally, with Barbara Harris: the woman who stayed with him until the last moment.

The construction worked completely in every room but one.

So if you ask me what I now think about modern love — among all the contemporary conditions that have shifted so much in the last decade — the practical answer, while not romantic to hear, is this.

Accept what you can control, and what you cannot.

And embrace the feeling anyway. Whether it is love, passion, attraction, or whatever else gravitates you toward another human being.

For more of Pim’s work, and a worldview that extends well beyond relationships — she writes La Garçonne Diary, named for a French term once used of women who stepped outside the conventional. It is where she records what she notices in ordinary life.

Substack · Instagram

When I was searching for a place to stay during the Milan winter, I came across an apartment on Airbnb. At first glance, it had everything you would expect: a prime location between Porta Venezia and Porta Romana, with trams, metro lines, and easy access to Centrale and Linate. But what drew me in wasn’t convenience—it was presence.

From the images alone, something felt different. While many Milanese interiors lean toward a polished, post-war modern aesthetic, this space carried a deeper sense of intention. Every object seemed considered, every corner curated. It wasn’t just decoration—it was expression. And through that expression, I was led to the man behind it: Alessandro Brunelli.

Alessandro—Ale—is Milanese by birth, with a quiet charisma that was already evident in our first exchanges on WhatsApp, while I was still in Bangkok. But what truly intrigued me came later, when we exchanged Instagram profiles. I noticed his background in engineering—structured, rational—but paired with something seemingly at odds: contributions to Style Magazine, and a global art platform, ITISARTIME, followed by hundreds of thousands.

That contrast stayed with me.

So I decided that before my time at his residence came to an end, we needed to sit down—not just for a casual chat, but for a proper conversation. And not just anywhere, but in his own salon on Via Francesco Guicciardini, over a glass of Sicilian wine. To talk about art, life, and the role of passion in shaping a human existence.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you—Signore Alessandro Brunelli.

Patrick:

Before we even met, you gave me your Instagram, and I stumbled onto the account: ITISARTIME. What’s the story behind it?

Alessandro Brunelli:

It started in 2014, when I was 24—much younger than now, unfortunately. At that time, I needed something new in my life. I had already been collecting art for five years, and I was coming out of another project—the university page called “Spotted.”

It was a funny concept: people would write about someone they “spotted” at university. It wasn’t stupid—more like playful, romantic, and a little chaotic. But in the end, I had issues with a colleague who ran the pages with me, and I decided to step out of that business. Even if it was quite profitable, I gave full ownership to my ex co-founder and chose to start again from zero.

The key point is that Spotted wasn’t born from passion. It came from identifying a market opportunity. It was business—an idea we tested. Not a hobby, not something I loved. And I realized: if I’m starting from scratch again, I need something that truly excites me, so I can give 100% of myself. Because in the previous experience, I didn’t give everything—and I could feel it.

At that moment, art was the most important thing in my life outside university. And I thought: why not open a page where I can share what I genuinely like? In those years, everyone was sharing holidays and selfies. I wasn’t interested in showing off my life, but I did want to communicate something.

So I opened ITISARTIME. At the beginning I posted what I bought at auctions and what I collected, hoping to find people with the same passion, maybe even the same artists. But honestly, after three or four months, it felt like a big failure. The art I collected was too niche—mostly Italian artists from the post–Second World War period. If you know it, it’s interesting. But on social media, it doesn’t always hit immediately.

That’s when I understood there was a bigger potential outside my niche. And I realized something important: I didn’t need to show what I owned. My real need was to communicate what I was discovering—what I was seeing in the world, even if I would never be able to buy it. So I switched from showing my collection to curating what I found around me.

From that point, I started studying art online seriously. I spent hours—nights—after work and after university, searching for the best artists, new artists, fresh work. I tried to understand how dynamic the market was, and where it was going. It took effort and discipline, but people started to appreciate it. The audience grew constantly, and the growth was impressive.

After some years, I became one of the main art pages in Europe, maybe even in the world—not for historical art, but for new work, pushing young artists. And I always wanted to challenge that cliché we have in Italy, when people look at monuments and say: “We were so deep back then, and now we’re nothing.” Of course, Michelangelo and Leonardo happen once in a century. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t something incredible today. The world is more complex now—we just have to find what is worth looking at.

So I dedicated my leisure time—almost my life—to finding what works: collaborating with other pages, meeting artists, understanding them better, explaining them better. And that’s how we arrive at today: around 720k followers, a big community. It still impresses me every day, and it makes me proud of the research I’ve done for more than ten years.

Patrick:

If there’s one word for what you do, it’s “curation.” And you touched something important: doing business from passion versus doing it from market demand—but we’ll come back to that later.

For now—when people think of art, especially conservative people, they think of classic works—Renaissance painting, the big museums. I just visited the Pinacoteca di Brera yesterday—beautiful, grand, intense. In France, maybe people think of Impressionism: Monet, Degas. But you’re saying art isn’t only about looking backward. In your definition, what does art mean to you personally?

Alessandro Brunelli:

For me, art is not a strict definition or one concept. It’s more about emotion. Art can be almost anything that moves something inside you—something ordinary life doesn’t move.

If you feel a strong impression—positive, negative, deep—then someone has taken something from a standard level to a higher level. That can be painting and sculpture, of course, but it can also be photography, literature, even food. Art is a different kind of communication: it makes you absorb something in a way you don’t normally absorb it.

For me, art is a vector of communication. It tells you: this message, this activity, this object—it was done with excellence, at a level beyond the usual. Sometimes I can’t even explain why something is good, but my feeling recognizes it. My emotion recognizes it. And when that happens, I say: “This is real art.”

It can be like a three-Michelin-star dish, or a painting. You can’t fully explain it, but you can recognize it in different sectors. The common thread is exactly that: emotion moved by excellence. And that’s how I interpret art.

Patrick:

So if someone wants to actually appreciate art—really connect to it—how should they approach it? Because people go to museums for two reasons. One is to truly appreciate the work. The second is to take a photo and post it—proof they were there. But many of those people don’t know how to engage with the piece. In your case, if there’s a painting in front of you, what should a “normal person” do to understand or connect with it?

Alessandro Brunelli:

There’s something called the Stendhal effect—when you’re in front of an artwork and you feel an overwhelming emotion. Some people cry. Some people feel almost an “attack,” like they can’t explain what’s happening. That’s exactly the concept I mentioned.

So first: give yourself time. Look at details. Respect the artwork by slowing down. You make yourself smaller and you let the artwork become bigger. You put yourself in a humble position—almost like you’re “naked” in front of art. That’s how you get absorbed.

I personally like going to museums right at opening or near closing time, because there are fewer people. When you’re alone in front of the work, you can absorb it without distractions.

Second—and I know this is not always popular, but I think it’s necessary, especially for contemporary art—try to understand the artist’s life, their mood, what they lived, and what moved them to create that work. Some artists create their best work in the worst periods of their lives. Suffering can produce something beautiful. It’s strange, but it happens.

If you don’t understand what moved the artist, you lose part of the meaning. So: take your time, remove the ego—stop thinking about who is watching you, how you look, what photo will match your outfit. Remove everything. Be “naked” in front of art.

And then connect it to your own experience. We’re all human: we all have pain, joy, balance, imbalance. You can recognize yourself in someone else’s life. If you connect with the artist, you receive the emotion that created the work—and you make it yours. That’s my approach.

Patrick

“Naked in front of art”—I love that.

Now I want to shift to something personal. I’ve seen your routine here in Milan: you’re a key account manager in an energy sector—an engineer mindset, rational work. But art has been with you for a long time: you started the page in 2014, and you were already collecting years before that. So what keeps pulling you back to art, even with a career that could have taken you in a completely different direction?

Alessandro Brunelli:

Art taught me that everything is connected. Even if neuroscience says certain parts of the brain do different things, developing both sides helps me. It allows me to look at rational things in a more creative way—and to look at art in a more structured way.

For example, I like figurative art—art you can recognize. People say figurative art peaked in the past, like with Caravaggio, and then it’s finished. But I don’t agree. Today you can still make figurative art and inject new emotion into it. Even the choice of “white”—pure white versus a dirty white, cream, vanilla—communicates something. Maybe the light is different. Maybe the subject’s emotion is dark. These choices matter.

Caravaggio is full of emotion. His paintings are like a video frame—you can feel what’s about to happen. It’s incredible. But today, some artists can communicate emotion without the traditional technical school. That’s what I like: the contamination between two worlds—rational and creative.

As an engineer, I can also “read” figurative art more easily than abstract. Abstract often requires more context—more concept. But in general, I need both sides: when I’m too impulsive or emotional, I need rational calm; when life feels too flat, I need emotion and creativity to lift it to another level.

Patrick:

That brings me to the future of art. You mentioned figurative art evolving through a modern lens. I relate to that because my domain is fashion. I used to believe classic dressing should be exactly the same as classic menswear from the past. But after living in Milan, I realized: to keep classic style alive, it has to adapt. It has to evolve.

So the future of art—AI, digital art, all of it. What do you think? You have a teenager in a basement prompting a tool, and suddenly they generate “fantasy art” and post it. What’s your take?

Alessandro Brunelli:

This is the one-million question. It’s the biggest trend of the last decade—and maybe the most disruptive moment for art.

We already passed through NFTs, through digital art hype, and in many cases… nothing really stayed. But AI is different. And I’ll tell you my unpopular opinion: I see it as a big opportunity.

There’s a Picasso quote people love: “Good artists copy, great artists steal.” The point is: artists who are scared of AI often don’t understand that you still need to be a great artist to produce something truly impressive—even with a laptop. AI doesn’t automatically create genius. It changes the tool. It expands access.

It enlarges the group of people who can bring ideas to reality. Because many people have strong concepts in their mind but don’t have the technique. Technique is a bridge between idea and result. It’s useful—but it can also be a limit.

For me, art is first of all a message. A good painting without a message is still good. But a good painting with a message that moves you becomes a masterpiece.

Also, we were already moving toward concept long before AI. Conceptual art proved that the idea can be central. Many important contemporary artists don’t physically make the work alone—sometimes they don’t touch it at all. They direct it. The message is the core.

So why should AI scare us? It’s just a new tool, like photography was. When photography arrived, artists were terrified: “Now what do we do?” But art didn’t die. Art evolved. It found new ways to communicate emotion.

AI will do the same. It will push us into a new “blue ocean,” a new area where people create what we haven’t seen before. Genius will still be genius—maybe discovered even more. Average will remain average.

I know this opinion is unpopular. When I post AI work, people attack me and I sometimes lose thousands of followers. They say: “This isn’t real art.” But I believe it’s a tool that can reveal artists who would otherwise never be seen—people who might have become engineers instead.

Patrick:

I agree with you. The purist argument is always: “True art needs mastery, dedication, the hand.” But I think the core is perspective—an individual vision that becomes form, and that form transfers emotion.

That’s why I now admire fashion designers in a different way, especially Giorgio Armani. I went to Brera yesterday and saw an Armani exhibition—pieces from the 1980s to 2010s. Armani didn’t worship the classic menswear rules. He expressed a vision: extended shoulders, longer lines, new proportions. The technique matters, yes—but what makes it art is the idea and the emotional message.

Alessandro Brunelli:

Exactly. And if tomorrow a new technology changes tailoring, Armani is still Armani because of his ideas. If he can’t use the tool, he finds technicians who can. Same with artists: the best idea wins.

That’s why I’m not scared of new tools. I’m excited. People who are scared are often afraid of losing their position—because the field is opening. But if you already understand that concept is central, you won’t panic.

Hyper-realistic painting is a good example. I respect the technique, but it doesn’t always move me. Hyper-realism was already challenged the moment photography was invented. Art had to evolve to survive—to communicate emotion differently. AI is similar. It will force evolution, and we’ll see a new generation that can finally move from idea to reality faster.

Patrick:

Let’s widen the scope. Something I admire about Europe is how art is present in daily life. In some places, art—and wine, books, fashion—are seen as “elite.” People work 9 to 5, they’re tired, and when they have time they scroll TikTok instead of spending energy on something that “requires understanding.”

So what’s your take? Is art essential? Or is it optional—something reserved for elites?

Alessandro Brunelli:

It’s a crucial point. Collecting art with a capital “A” is still related to the elite—because if you want to invest and not lose money, usually you need to invest a lot in single works. That’s the reality. Some artists keep stable value. And galleries are businesses: if they sell a painting for 10k, they invite people who can buy. It’s not charity—it’s a market.

Also, museums sometimes cost too much compared to entertainment. Not because the ticket is crazy, but because the “effort” is higher. Cinema is easier. The museum can feel “poorer” to people because not all senses are involved, and the intellectual work is heavier.

But I love what Milan does: one Sunday a month, museums are free. That removes excuses. The risk becomes zero, and people can discover art.

The deeper issue is that people forget leisure time is valuable. We deserve to spend it well. Restaurants are comfortable: you’re served, you feel like a king, you control the experience. Museums are different: you can experience emotions that aren’t always pleasant. A painting can remind you of pain. You might leave with a bad mood. But later you understand: managing that emotion helps you grow.

So yes—art can feel elitist by nature of the market. But people also need to make an effort to go toward excellence. If both sides move—institutions creating access, and individuals choosing to engage—then art can become more open.

Patrick:

That makes sense. We live in a world of distraction. Attention disappears into scrolling, and suddenly half an hour is gone. But exposing yourself to challenging work—even uncomfortable emotions—trains you. It develops you.

Alessandro Brunelli:

And that’s why social media is the real comparison—not cinema. Social media is zero effort, zero cost, and it becomes a drug. I work on social networks too, but I try to clean the space by showing valuable things. Still, we’re in a sea where 90% is trash. That’s the reality of our moment.

Patrick:

Final question—let’s return to the beginning. You said you left a profitable project because it wasn’t passion, then you built ITISARTIME from something you loved.

In real life, we all live that tension: practicality versus passion, stability versus expression. For you—balancing engineering life with this art life—how important is passion? Do you follow it fully, or do you manage it, negotiate with it?

Alessandro Brunelli:

I want to say something positive about routine. People always say: escape routine, leave your comfort zone, live a special life. But routine is valuable. Routine is like the trunk of a tree—it gives structure, stability, resilience.

And passion is like the branches and leaves. A trunk without leaves is ugly—it’s dry. But branches without a trunk also don’t stand.

So the balance matters. Routine helps you become mature, build a family, build a project, build a life. If I only followed emotion, I would maybe be immature—or destroyed. I don’t want to stay a teenager forever.

At the same time, I see people who put 100% into routine—work, family, repetition—and they become narrow. They only have one topic: their job, their chores. That’s a poor view of life. Without passion, you lose something essential.

So I can’t give you a perfect percentage—everyone has their own balance. But the message is: routine is as important as passion. You’re obliged to yourself to use leisure time well—time for people you love, and time for what makes you alive.

Everyone has a passion, shaped by experience. We’re like tabula rasa—experience writes on us. And when you find what you love, you must go deeper. Without passion, you become like an AI agent: work, home, sleep, repeat. The AI might even do it better than you.

So you need a real reason beyond routine. Keep the routine—but don’t forget to live.

Patrick:

I love that analogy—the trunk and the branches. Because sometimes a branch can become its own tree. If you have stability, and your passion grows strong enough, maybe it becomes a new trunk—its own life.

I’ve lived both extremes. Pure routine with no branches—it felt robotic. And then I also went all-in on passion and went broke. My life is better now: I have stability, and I can fund my own creative work without begging for permission.

So yes—this feels like the clearest answer. And here we are: one hour and twenty-five minutes later. I think we got a decent conversation.

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