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.