Hey everyone, I hope you’re doing well! I’ve wanted to write something for a while now, but every time I tried, another thought took its place. I wrote several pieces over the past weeks, yet somehow none of them felt quite ready to share. So this week, I decided to finally publish them all, a small “blog dump” of the ideas that have been sitting in my drafts.
It’s strange how time slips away when life gets full. Between finishing my college applications, planning my next steps, and trying to keep some kind of routine, the days blurred together. Only now, looking back, do I realize how much has changed beneath the surface.
That’s what this post is really about.
When I spoke in front of almost one and a half thousand people at our Matura Ball, it felt like a dream. The hall was filled with families, friends, teachers, and alumni. The lights were bright, the music was loud, and for a short moment, it felt as if everything I had ever worked for came together in that one evening.
But after the speech, when the noise faded and I was back in my room, I realized something that has stayed with me ever since. The stage was only the reflection of how far I had come. It wasn’t how I got there.
What people didn’t see were the hours I spent practicing alone. The evenings when I spoke into the mirror and stumbled over the same sentences again and again. The notes scattered across my desk. The endless recordings I deleted because my voice didn’t sound right. None of that looked impressive. It didn’t feel like progress. But that was the part that mattered most.
You don’t grow in the spotlight. You grow in the quiet.
I think we often forget that. It’s easy to assume that growth is supposed to be visible, that the important parts happen when people are watching. But the truth is, the real work happens long before that. It’s in the repetition no one notices, in the quiet decisions you make when no one would know if you gave up.
When I look back, the moments that changed me the most weren’t the ones on stage. They were the small ones. Like when I finally managed to stay calm before a speech instead of overthinking every word. Or when I caught myself actually enjoying the process instead of worrying about the result. That’s where growth hides, in the ordinary.
Sometimes I think about how much value we attach to the visible parts of our journey. We chase the next milestone, the next big opportunity, the next performance that proves we’re moving forward. But growth doesn’t wait for an audience. It happens in the background, quietly and consistently, until one day you realize that something that used to scare you doesn’t anymore.
That’s why I’ve learned to appreciate those hidden moments a bit more. They may not look like progress, but they’re what make everything else possible.
If you’re in that silent part of your own journey right now, where no one sees what you’re doing, keep going. And when the lights finally turn on, you’ll realize that every quiet moment counted.
This post is the first of a few I’ll be publishing in a big “dump” this week. Each one reflects a part of the last few months; lessons I didn’t plan to learn but probably needed to.
Thanks for reading, and thank you for still being here.
Filippo
Braunstorming 