And now I pay for Twitter – it seems fair. I also chopped a chocolate bar to use on yoghurt or to sprinkle on top of fruits, mostly because I’m obsessed with natural food right now. How and when did we stop eating real food and started eating “safe substances”?

I bought sparkling water to mix it with a strong tea. The idea is to make a natural soda and fool my brain while I get used to the original flavour of things provided by Mother Nature. I finished a 500-piece puzzle and started a new one. I spent money on (maybe not so) necessary products – one of them is a resistance band that I’ll use to do exercises every morning.

Aging caught me and, while I’m still alive, I need to pretend that everything is okay. Meditation escaped me once more, and again I need to start from scratch in the hope of living until I am 100 years old, which is not gonna happen if I don’t stop eating so much junk food – as if it was an easy thing to do.

I finished The Wish Collector for the second time. Great book, with a main character who is a man who is not afraid of being a man. And, in that book, there is only one God, and not a bunch of “gods” like the modern literature insists on saying – modern culture already eradicated the family structure, now its goal is to eradicate religion as well – last month I finished The Starless Sea, and that same problem bothered me the entire book.

In Road Trip With a Vampire (I started reading it yesterday), God apparently doesn’t exist either. The main character, Zelda, keeps referring to gods, dear gods, oh my gods, or something like that. I honestly don’t care that much to remember her exact words, and if I hadn’t liked the first two books from this series, I would have given up on reading that nonsense – good thing I downloaded it instead of paying.

I prefer to pay for what I consume (hence the Twitter Premium). I bought a movie ticket for Fantastic Four and downloaded it to watch at home, I buy original Stabilo pens in stores. But that book… I’ll try a few more chapters before dropping it. Oh, and there is the last season of Stranger Things coming up. Why did I start watching it in 2016? Good thing jumping from a bridge wasn’t a thing at that time, otherwise I might have done it along with everybody else just to be part of the gang.

There are so many things in my head at the moment. More crap that I want to buy, more unhealthy desserts that I want to eat. Should I put flyers about my English classes on the bus stop again or should I try to use Twitter to create quality content? It wouldn’t be that difficult given the quality of the content there – God forbid any adult be reasonable on Twitter.

Cemeteries are not the safest places, at least not in São Paulo. You can’t just go there on a “tour” as you would in countries where this tour is actually a tourist attraction. And the poorer the neighbourhood, the more dangerous it would be to place a foot there. It hasn’t always been like that, though. Thirty or forty years ago, to go for a walk in a cemetery during lunch break was a common activity - it was peaceful, and it was safe.

But in the 21st century, the only safest day for adventuring through the gates of this sacred place is November 2nd. They increase surveillance, like if it were a normal thing to protect, during one single day, those who pay their respect to the ones they once loved – apparently, being in pain is not enough punishment to those who are grieving, maybe they need to be mugged as well while trying to leave flowers to those who are not here anymore. 

Maybe, like myself, a ton of history enthusiasts take this opportunity as a chance to see with their own eyes a little of São Paulo’s memory hidden among the graves – not that I know anyone who enjoys doing so.

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2025 was the second year in a row that I spent walking through the cemetery in my neighbourhood. Last year I didn’t pay much attention because I had to be quick on my visit, but this year I took the time to really look at the graves and the names on them, if only there were names to be read. Remember how I said it was not safe to walk in cemeteries, even during daylight? There is a reason for that.

Criminals are running wild inside those walls, they steal everything that can be sold. Small plaques with individual names, big plaques with the name of the family. You know the little iron gates, through which we can see the coffins? Some of them are gone too, and since people don’t care much about fixing them, they are being replaced by a thick plastic bag or a cheap wooden square. The statues are being destroyed (not by the wind), there are no places to sit and reflect (not even the pictures of the deceased are being spared). The only good thing I can say is that the cemetery was clean – or maybe it was clean on November 2nd, whereas during the other 364 days of the year it remains under broken bottles of cheap wine, used syringes and cigarette butts.

Brazilians have many good qualities, but preserving history (or even liking its history) is not one of them – people here couldn't care less about their past. While I was walking in the cemetery, I noticed a person who was born a few months before the coup that overthrew the Brazilian monarchy and forced the Royal Family of Brazil into exile. I saw countless immigrants, most of them from Italy (the most beautiful graves belonged to immigrants, by the way), and some with surnames that I have never seen in my life. It breaks my heart to see Brazil’s memory becoming such a disposable asset, but what is left for me to do except write all of this? 

When I was a teenager I used to send letters to the people I cared about. E-mail was the most popular way to send “letters” at the time but, as computers were not a thing in my house, I was left with the good old handwritten letters. This personal tradition stopped around 2007 (I was 17), though I still send a few from time to time, not as regularly as I’d like because we have no more post office boxes on the street.

Those boxes were all removed, probably at the same time that WhatsApp became a thing, but to be honest that’s just guessing – I have no idea when Correios (Brazil’s Post Office) ended the boxes where once upon a time letters were left to be delivered – you could also buy stamps in stores that sold notebooks and pens. Today you need to go to an agency to post the letter, or you can just print the stamp at home and pay someone to take the letter to Correios – the stamp, printed in your house or at the agency, will simply be a boring QR code (you can buy a fake stamp and glue it to the letter, though, no one will mind).

That's modernity, and if you’ll allow me to speak freely, I don’t like it very much. Sure, advances in medicine are huge, not having to stay in line to pay a bill in the bank is great, having washing machines the size of our hands is a big step for housewives when we consider that 200 years ago everything was washed by hand. Should I feel guilty for holding on to the way things were made before? Maybe failing to keep up with innovations can be considered retrograde, but come on, I can’t be the only one missing the warmth that all technology took away from us.

And if I have to be the only one rescuing old traditions, then so be it. I am going to keep using a broom to clean my balcony, I am going to use my hand to write letters to those I admire or who are part of my life – fortunately some of them have a public company address where the letters can be sent. In the old days (10 years ago), people used to rent P.O. Boxes, and the address was on their Instagram profile, visible to whoever wanted to send them gifts (or letters). Today you have to ask for the address via DM message, without much hope of getting a reply.

Now, since there is no Correios agency next to my house, and I don’t want to trust anyone with my letters, an Uber will be called using my ‘go-out phone’, the one I take with me on the streets because, let’s face it, this is São Paulo, and you are always in the imminence of losing your belongings. Also, I just want you to know that I don't write letters with the intention of creating a movement of rebels who hate the modern age, but because I miss the tenderness and the beauty of the things we leave behind as time cruelly changes our perception of everyday life.

Let’s time travel to 2015, when I wanted to be a blogger and win the things all YouTubers were winning and be paid to post about a book or maybe a perfume. I always wished to have an audience, but I had no emotional structure nor the strength to create countless posts until someone noticed me.

At that time, I wrote my posts in Portuguese. I did what others were doing: DIYs, movie reviews, what’s in my bag. Today, simple posts about my simple life, with no photos that had gone through a very carefully planned production, gather more audience than I have ever had ten years ago, when I was trying not-so-hard to be someone on the internet.

And when I open the page that says how many people come to spend a little time with me every month, and see all those numbers, I can’t help but wonder who you guys are – that are so many of you, from all around the world. And even though I can stay away from the blog for months, you guys keep coming and reading my content. Thank you so much.

From now on I want to work on this blog for real. No more spontaneous posts from time to time, no more deleting posts where I was crying over that man whom I was always talking about (I wish him the best, though). And I couldn’t have reached this decision without you guys, that were here even when I was not.

Thank you so-so-so much for never giving up on me. I’m so scared right now, because I did something that I didn’t know that I shouldn’t have, and that something is here now to collect its price. Having this place, and to simply write about simple things in a simple way feels good, especially because content like this is disappearing from the internet.

Three hours before the sun is up, birds in my neighbourhood are singing like if there were no tomorrow, doing their best to attract a suitable partner to shag during the next few weeks, when fruits are going to ripening, attracting insects that the parents are going to use  to feed the little babies under their wings – it makes one wonder about the circle of life, doesn't it?

We have so little time, when you think about it. At best, we can live 100 years if we don’t die first at the hands of cruel people or some other “accident” that happened due to ridiculous coincidences of everyday life. And what about those people who take care of themselves, eat well, go to the gym and die from an incurable disease? We all know a fellow who smoked or drank their entire life and had nothing, while those who worry to do the best they can to live as long as possible die of cancer in their 30s.

These are topics I’m constantly thinking about. If I’m leaving my soul on the toilet seat, with my tush shining like a well-polished medal, I can just go to the drugstore and buy, for almost no money, a box full of pills, take one of them, and after a few hours be almost as good as new – although maybe a little dehydrated – while, 500 years ago, the richest people on the planet, who could buy anything money could afford, died of diarrhea.

They could never have imagined a so serious conditions could be cured by a so cheap pill. I can’t as well imagine how the world is going to be 500 years from now. Will we be able to work on Mars during the day and come home to dinner at night? Will cancer be treatable with a cheap medication? Will English still be the dominant language?

So many things we won’t see. And yet, we today treat time like a disposable gadget, as if we had a lot to spare. A hundred years is nothing compared to all the history that happened before we were born and the history that will continue long after we are gone. Don’t waste your time here on Earth. Make each day count, like Jack once said (just to be clear, I am not actually fond of this character, I’m just quoting him – Rose was engaged, for Christ's sake, but that is a topic for another post).