About Me — Giulia Montanari

Summary

Giulia Montanari is a public registrar with a passion for storytelling and history, who dreams of becoming a famous writer while engaging in various creative hobbies to escape the monotony of her job.

Abstract

Giulia Montanari introduces herself as someone with an unusual job that involves registering life events such as deaths, births, marriages, and more. Despite the significant responsibility of her role, she finds the work incredibly dull and often entertains herself with stories ranging from light-hearted to dark and peculiar. Her fascination with the past is evident in her love for vintage items and the narratives they hold. At 33, Giulia reflects on her life, which she considers uneventful, having held various mundane jobs before her current position. She copes with her unremarkable life by immersing herself in reading, pyrography, painting, and creative use of a glue gun. Giulia has never completed university nor left her small Italian hometown, attributing these facts to her anxiety and a tendency to settle. She harbors a long-standing dream to become a celebrated author, admiring literary figures like Nabokov, Eco, and Tartt, and though she is not actively working towards this goal, she acknowledges her envy of more talented writers and humorously contemplates a dark magic ritual to trade places with them.

Opinions

Giulia views her job as monotonous and seeks creativity through storytelling and artistic activities.
She has a deep appreciation for history and finds joy in collecting and interacting with antique objects.
Giulia is self-aware about her life choices, recognizing her own tendency to settle for less and her penchant for complaining.
Despite not actively pursuing her writing dream, she is candid about her desire for fame and recognition in the literary world.
She expresses a sense of envy towards more successful writers, indicating a mix of admiration and frustration with her own progress.
Her tone suggests a blend of humor and self-deprecation when discussing her life and aspirations.

I make people die by writing their names on a book. No, really, that’s my job.

I do like dramatic poses, don’t I?

Now, let me preface this by saying that I never physically killed anyone — which, I know, is not a suspicious thing to say at all. I also do not own a demonic notebook that kills anyone whose name is written in its pages — which is exactly what somebody owning a demonic notebook that kills anyone whose name is written in its pages would say, now that I think of it.

But I digress, as I always do.

What I mean is that I register people’s deaths. And births. And also marriages, divorces, citizenships and also a lot of other stuff I won't bore you with. People are not legally dead (or alive, or married, or adopted) until I write it down, and I guess that’s a kinda cool job to have.

Except it’s not. It’s a fabulously boring job, and that’s one of the reasons why I tell myself stories all the time. I’ve always done that, and I guess I will do it until the day I die.

Sometimes it’s light-hearted stories, sometimes it’s dark stories, sometimes it’s weird-ass stories that come out of nowhere. A lot of the times it’s stories from the past.

I’m lowkey obsessed with the past: I like old clothes, old jewelry, old stuff. I wander around flea markets looking for old records, old postcards, old photographs. Thing is, objects tell stories, and I’m a sucker for a good story.

I’ll be 33 in March and I can’t say I have done a lot of interesting stuff in my life: before working as a public registrar I’ve been a waitress, a tax consultant, a janitor, an insurance agent, an accountant and a secretary, and it’s all exactly every bit as dull as it sounds. To avoid death by boredom in my less-than-exciting life I read a lot, I pyrography wood a lot, paint sometimes and use my glue gun to do a lot of things that are definitely not supposed to be done with a glue gun.

I really like burning stuff. I mean, who doesn’t?

I never finished university. I also never left the tiny-ass, middle-of-nowhere dormitory town on the hills of northern Italy I’ve been living in for my entire life. I could blame those last two things on my lifelong anxiety, but I’m really just one of those people who settle for something less than ideal so that they can then complain about it for the rest of eternity. That’s kind of my jam — I really do love complaining.

My dream for as long as I can remember was to be a writer — not just any writer, though: a famous writer. A bestseller writer, a rockstar writer, marching down the streets through enthusiastic crowds. A Vladimir Nabokov. An Umberto Eco. A Stephen King, an Agatha Christie, an Arthur Conan Doyle. A Donna Tartt, whom I worship like a goddess of literature, bespoke suits and stylish black bobs.

Am I anywhere close to reaching that goal? No. But am I trying to perfect my writing by practicing constantly, studying the craft, and striving to always be humble and ready to learn? Also no.

Do I look at people who are more talented than me in envy and wonder if there’s a dark magic ritual I can perform to switch places with them? You can bet your ass I do.

Working as a tax consultant in 2013. Very exciting