Fog Before Flight

The road narrows between old brick walls draped in wisteria. Poppies crowd the edges. Olive trees, lilacs, cherry blossoms, and tall cypress sentinels line the way as the fog holds everything in its arms this morning, soft and reluctant to let go.

The sun is trying. Beams push through the mist and land in dappled patches on the tree trunks, lighting small circles of gold against the gray. I’m driving slowly, not because of the fog, but because I don’t want this to end.

As I walked to my car this morning, I took one last breath of Tuscan air, scented with gardenias and burning olive wood, a smell I’ve come to love from the farmers who were already working before I was. My bags are packed. I’m ready to go.

That Peter, Paul, and Mary song is stuck in my head. You know the one. Especially the part about “I hate to go.”

Five Weeks Gone

Five weeks ago, I arrived in Florence alone, enrolled in a classical painting and drawing foundations course at the Florence Academy of Art. A program that scared me before I ever unpacked. Not a vacation. An adventure. The kind where you don’t know if you’ll survive it until you’re on the other side.

I survived it. Barely, some days.

Somewhere between the charcoal drawings at nine in the morning and the anatomy lectures at night, something shifted. Not just in how I see a face or render a shadow. Something deeper. The kind of shift that only happens when you’re quietly alone with yourself long enough to hear what you actually think.

The Lifeboat Bond

There’s a particular bond that forms among people who are struggling together. My fellow students and I weren’t tourists. We were in a lifeboat, all of us trying to figure out how to keep our heads above water through the hours, the lessons, the frustrations. We talked each other through it. Lunches. Jokes. Random stories between sessions.

I didn’t know I missed that kind of connection so much. I live in a virtual world now. My people are on Zoom. But there’s no substitute for a hallway conversation, a shared laugh over a bad drawing, the warmth of someone who understands exactly what you’re going through because they’re going through it too.

That’s not a small thing. I’d forgotten it was a thing at all.

What Teachers Know

Here’s what surprised me most about how they teach at the Florence Academy.

Not once, in five weeks, did an instructor walk up to my easel and say, “That arm is wrong. That eye is too high.” Not once.

Instead, they asked questions.

“How are you feeling about this? What feels right? What feels off?”

They were forcing self-evaluation. Because none of it works long-term if you need someone else to solve it for you. The goal isn’t a good painting. The goal is a painter who can see.

I added private Sunday lessons because I didn’t want to waste a single day. I attended 20 optional drawing sessions with live models. Anatomy lectures. Art history. Optional everything. I took all of it.

On the last day, during the final critique, four instructors told me they weren’t used to seeing a student push that hard, do that much, refuse to coast.

I nearly teared up.

What It Actually Costs

Not because of the compliment. Because of what it cost to earn it.

There were mornings I wanted to sleep in. Afternoons I was sure I was getting worse, not better. Evenings I questioned why a person at my stage of life was putting himself through something this uncomfortable when nobody was making him.

And that last part is the key phrase: when nobody was making me.

There’s a version of pushing through that’s easy to romanticize — the athlete grinding before the championship, the musician practicing before the big show. That kind of effort has an audience, even if it’s imaginary. You’re performing the discipline as much as you’re practicing it.

What’s harder, and rarer, is the work you do when the outcome is uncertain, when no one will ever know whether you showed up or didn’t, when quitting is not just available but entirely invisible. No one to disappoint. No one to impress. Just you and the easel and the choice.

That’s where character actually lives. Not in the heroic moments. In the quiet ones.

I pushed through anyway.

The Satisfaction Surprise

Here’s what I wasn’t prepared for: the satisfaction on the other side isn’t really about the result.

I’ve seen the drawings. They’re significantly better. But that’s not the thing.

The thing is knowing you didn’t quit when quitting was easy and completely available. That knowledge becomes something you carry forward. It changes how you see the next hard thing, and the one after that. Every time you’ve done it before, you’ve gotten a reference point. Evidence. Proof you’re the kind of person who stays.

That’s what compounds. Not the skill. The self-knowledge.

And here’s what I want you to sit with: Pushing through is not a skill for artists. It’s a skill for living.

Your Fog Moment

You’ve had a version of this. A moment where the thing in front of you was hard enough to walk away from, and you didn’t. You stayed. You endured the frustration, the self-doubt, the slow and ugly progress, and you came out the other side with something you couldn’t have gotten any other way.

That feeling is available to you again. Right now. In whatever you’ve been putting off because it’s hard and because no one is forcing you. There is a certain confidence that comes from powering through when no one is watching.

The fog is burning off. The sun is winning.

The question is whether you’ll be on the other side of something difficult by the time it does.

Eric Rhoads