I’m on a flight from Valencia to Berlin after having spent a long weekend with my dear friend Dmitry “enjoying” the Fallas celebration and a long night of coding (maybe more about this last part in the future).

I’ve just started a new book when, on page 18, I read this passage:

I pause for a second and look back at my life. All the different paths I could have walked and all the crossroads I have passed. My eyes get wet while thinking about all the good things that have happened so far, while my heart fills with gratitude.

A crossroad, to me, is a key moment where life took a clear direction, whatever that direction was.

I let my mind wander while the plane starts to tango with the wind. It’s getting dark, and the sky is at that point where it looks like pink flames coming from the abyss of gravity. I pick up my phone and open the note app. I start to jot down names and situations, dumping down memories in the first language that comes out naturally, sometimes blending English and Italian.

Most probably, these people don’t even know the butterfly effect they ignited. I look at this list, and I wish I could just say thank you to all these people. And this is my first attempt to do so. Thank you for being part of my life.

Dubbyo. He was the first person I met in my hometown that was a Hip Hop head. It was a tiny little concert in a park with about 20 people, and the 16-year-old version of me was shy and alone around the area. I have to thank him for welcoming me and opening the doors of this world and the small cultural ecosystem that was Piazza Pertini in the late 90s. Probably Hip Hop didn’t save my life, but it brought me people that I consider my second family and tons of experiences and memories that still nourish me today.

Roberto Re. He’s kind of an Italian self-help guru, and, though nowadays I probably wouldn’t choose his books, when I was 22 one of his books changed my life. It took me almost 3 years to go through the entire book and its exercises. I was picking it up every now and then when I felt it was time to move forward, and I have to admit that it changed the way I saw life and its challenges. It helped me shift my mindset from “I won’t be able to pass those math exams” to “I will do it”. And I did, but this is another story.

Panic. Probably he wouldn't even recognize it, but he was the one who let me discover the design school I enrolled at in Rome. He was studying there, and I was visiting him for concerts. Who could have known that when I grew tired of Engineering I would have shifted to design, enrolled in that same school a few years later, and made design my main profession till now?

Roberta. After Milan, I planned an interrail trip across the major cities in Europe to decide where to move next–I had an urge to move abroad and experience a different environment. Berlin was never part of this plan until she put it on the map. Personally, I had high hopes for Copenhagen and Lisbon, but for reasons, I ended up moving to Berlin. And that would have never happened if it wasn’t for her. And to this day, it was totally worth it.

Fred. He’s one of my oldest friends, and he’s the one who got me involved in co-founding Fattelo!. Co-founding a company was one of the most exciting and stressful experiences of my 20s. We were able to be the first company in Italy founded by crowdfunding, and this even brought me on TV to speak about it, something I would have never imagined.

Clive. He mentioned my name to Jay; we crossed paths a couple of times, and thanks to that connection I was able to join the Adobe XDi and have one of the most exciting work experiences I've had so far. I had the pleasure of meeting amazing people and visiting cities across Europe and the States. The biggest memory was when I was on top of the Rockefeller Center after a workshop I ran in New York, and I got emotional thinking about all the events of the prior 2 years that led me there.

Mazza. We have known each other since high school, and he was the first person to believe in my managerial and leadership skills. If it wasn’t for his trust, I wouldn’t be where I am right now professionally.

Manu & Dmitry. I always loved building things–more on that in a future article–and Manu first, and Dima recently, supported me and pushed me to bring things to life. It might be this site or article (Manu), or an upcoming app I’m working on (Dima). Maybe I’m approaching a new crossroad right now.

This is not meant to be a comprehensive list of people I’m grateful for in my life. Instead, these are the people that marked a very specific change of direction in my life and that showed me the way in their own particular manner.

I switch from the Note App to Spotify, set random mode on my liked songs, and this song comes up. Thanks, universe, for allowing this to happen.

Take a moment and slow down; look back at your life. Who are the people that showed you a way at your crossroads? Perhaps today is the right day to thank them within yourself, or even better, reach out and let them know.