I screwed up again spending R$ 500 on a bed that we couldn’t lift up to my room. I had to return it to Amazon, in the hope that I will receive my money back once they have the bed in their possession – I received the bed within 24 hours, but only God knows when Amazon is going to refund me (it has been almost one week since they collected the bed to send it back). And I am still at the risk of getting a voucher instead of the actual money – what am I going to do with a R$ 500 Amazon voucher? Spend it all on cappuccino?

Worse than buying a bed I didn’t know that came in just one heavy piece (mattress “glued” to the base), was almost deleting my Instagram account this very morning. I know many people say it’s a toxic place, that destroys our brain and makes us waste our entire day with nonsense content, I say that too when I need to give an excuse to why I don’t follow my friends there and to why I don’t post any educational content.

But very deep down, the true is that I loved to think of things to share on my stories, and to think of funny storylines where I could use memes and funny songs; talk to international creators was amazing as well. I even made a French artist friend who gave me a high resolution image of one of her watercolor drawings (I use it as a wallpaper on my phone). Now it’s just a sad place, that reminds me that Instagram was the app I used to talk to my favourite person in the world.

A year and a half ago, I told this man I couldn’t be his friend anymore (for obvious reasons). Nothing changed in my routine with the platform except that he wasn’t there, I wouldn’t hear from him again, I wouldn’t tell him my thoughts on some Dracula movie and wouldn't support his work – something I thought he wouldn’t miss since he had this long-term girlfriend, a person with whom he takes a lot of 'mirror selfies'. I never heard from him again after sending that stupid "break-up" message; curiously, that act of loyalty to his girlfriend made me love him even more, for it shows he respects the woman he is with (he is a keeper, just not mine to keep).

All this jibber-jabber you read above is mostly for me (hello, free therapy). For me to understand why I really don’t want to post cool things on my feed or in my storie. I miss talking to artists I admire, but I don’t want to read their answers, they are not the one I want to talk to. To be honest, I thought things would get easier with time, that I would let go and stop caring about him. Deleting my account was not the answer I was looking for and wouldn’t make things better. And I do need it as a business card for future students (they all search my name on Instagram to see who I am and how my English classes are). I can’t delete it but I don’t need to update it any more either – except for four missing stories I can’t stop thinking about. In January 2024 I started this 30-day song challenge, and until now I haven’t finished it. There is still four songs to complete the challenge; I’m going to publish it now, and hopefully, after the 24 hours, my notification bar will be silenced forever.

Anne Rios

aamodafala@gmail.com

Protected with two gloves, a blanket and a pair of sneakers previously warmed up with a hair dryer, I washed the dishes while watching three episodes of Friends. There were still a few items left in the sink, but since I need to cook rice and beans for daddy today, I thought it would be better to leave it all there to finish later.

And it is so annoying to see Joey in love with Rachel (from all the episodes, these on the 8th season are the ones I like the least), I don’t know what the writers were thinking when they wrote that arc. But, on the other hand, do I really dislike those episodes, or am I just repeating what others say? I notice people (including myself) tend to repeat things they heard instead of thinking for themselves – much of my dislike for Taylor Swift came from those who couldn’t stand her.

You see that I had the perfect combo to quit my domestic errands: the cold, the rice, the beans, and Friends episodes I don’t like. Oh, and I wanted to have breakfast too. A slice of bread with white cheese, apple with peanuts, and chocolate (it came with the new kettle).

Not sure yet of what to eat for lunch. Do I cook something or do I go to the bakery to buy something there? It would be nice to stop by the market to buy regular cappuccino too (I’m having one with salted caramel flavour when I wake up). The weather app is promising 18ºC after 12 p.m., maybe that’s my window to get out and see real people.

Anne Rios

amodafala@gmail.com

The old kettle wasn’t broken after all, it was only overheated, and when it happens, the electrical resistance (I found out later) doesn’t work – the bitch tricked me into buying a new kettle, along with other things from my wishlist.

On the plus side, I can’t leave my house today to go to the grocery store to spend yet more money. I need to stay here and wait for the packages to arrive. The things I bought on Amazon are things I need, you see, but honestly I don’t know anymore how much I actually need them. Maybe these are only excuses to justify my problem with money – I never had any, and now that I have, I don’t know what to do with it.

Life can be quite confusing, right? One day we are a kid, with grown-ups making all the decisions for us, and the next day we are messed up adults that can’t buy clothes by ourselves

Adults raise their children, give them education and principles, but why don’t they prepare the little ones for when life demands them to make the “tough call”? This never changes. Choosing a bag for the bin shouldn’t be this complicated, it’s just a bloody plastic bag (I bought a purple one with a lavender smell, by the way). And house errands should be done first, regardless of the weather – I abandoned them all before 8 a.m. and I’m not even sorry.

Anne Rios

amodafala@gmail.com

My 10-year-old kettle is gone. And I wake up at four in the morning, I can’t exactly go to the kitchen to warm up some water for my ultra-processed cappuccino. So long story short, money was spent (again) to buy a new one.

And me being me, of course I didn’t stop at the kettle – boy, how an online cart can be a dangerous place to add products at 5 a.m. (needless to say chocolate was involved). The only thing left to do now is water the plants with fertilizer and glue a weather sticker on my diary to remind me that yesterday was a cloudy day – I bought a sheet of sticks with 3 weather options: sunny, cloudy and rainy.

Writing what happened yesterday in the diary was a pleasant task. Not so enjoyable, though, for I was too warm in my bed and the light of the table lamp wasn’t reaching the pages with strength enough to lighten it up. I didn’t get up to ajust the angle of the lamp, and the result was to suffer in silence while trying to write my memories in the diary – sometimes you win, sometimes you lose ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Anne Rios

amodafala@gmail.com

Last night I wrote a post in my sketchbook to publish today on this blog. But, between the time I wrote it (7 p.m.) and the time I sat down to type it (6 a.m. the next day) so much happened that my previous post became obsolete. How is this humanly possible? 11 hours threw all my beliefs away. I went from “buying the cheapest keyboard” to “I want a keyboard with velocity-sensitive keys that mimic a piano at least a little bit”.

The bright side of this madness of buying-buying-buying is that the keyboard I intend to have will make me save money for at least three months (maybe with the wait I’ll treat it better than my flute and my guitar).

Now, since writing a blog post before sleeping proved to be a waste of time, maybe a few entries in my abandoned diary will do the trick. Nothing like “oh my… that guy sent me a message on Instagram – wish he hadn’t”. Just a few lines to register what happened that day is enough to keep track of life and to remind me that my life wasn’t a complete waste of time, even though it seems to me like it has been.

Anne Rios

amodafala@gmail.com