Visual essay · 2025
A personal film about creativity, burnout and the cost of never stopping.
I made this six-minute film in August 2025, after a year spent rushing through almost everything.
Deadlines, meals, even the things I was supposed to enjoy. A question from my therapist stayed with me: “You eat fast, don't you, Mattia?”
I recognised the same hurry in the rest of my life. There was little room to notice what I was doing.
I uploaded my first YouTube video at ten. Photoshop, photography, websites, motion design and drawing on Procreate followed. By eighteen, I was working as a freelance filmmaker, photographer and designer in Italy. The things I used to do for fun had become my job. Every finished project led straight to the next one.
I built the mood board from things I’d been saving on mymind for months: colour palettes, images, quotes and references. Fragments collected before I knew what I would use them for.
Writing one page a day, by hand, in Field Notes notebooks also fed into the film. So did long walks in nature, one of the few things that let my thoughts slow down. The film follows that shift towards a more intentional way of spending time.
It remains my most personal project, and the one that connected most with my audience. A film about giving myself permission to pause.
mymind later shared the film in its weekly selection, alongside ideas about attention and our sense of time.