Me, My Heart, and I

by Melinda Gallo

About

I have been an expat since 1990. I initially moved to Paris a few months after graduating from university with a degree in 18th-century French literature. After working for a French computer software company for five years, I moved to a small town outside of London where I lived for two years. In 1997, I came to Florence for three months to learn Italian and to find my inspiration to write. Three days after I arrived, I knew that Florence was the home I had been searching for. I ended up staying for two years.

I would have stayed longer; however, for family reasons I returned to the US for a five-year hiatus. In 2004, I moved back to Florence.

In 2011, I split my life between Florence and Paris, where I was working as a technical writer, and created the "My Heart in Two Places" blog. At the beginning of 2016, when my contract ended, I returned to live in Florence permanently.

As I was revamping this blog, I wanted to rename it to correspond with what was going on in my life. One morning I woke up, the title came to me: "Me, My Heart, and I."

I renamed my blog "Me, My Heart, and I." Based on the well-known expression, "me, myself, and I," I changed "self" to "heart" because it seemed to be perfect for what my new blog is about. The "me" represents the creative (and child-like) side of me, the "heart" is how I navigate the world, and the "I" is the part of me that interacts with others by sharing what I enjoy.

In this blog, I will write about becoming a full-time writer, my life as an expat in Italy, and anything else that inspires me.

 
 

If you're intersted in finding out about my expat life in Florence, check out my Living in Florence blog.

If you'd like to read my articles about expat life as well as my interviews of expats in Florence, take a look at my personal website.

 

Web design and development by me and the header graphic designed by iStock.com/carlacastagno.