It is Sunday, and Yasmin is still with me. She will head back to her mother’s this afternoon, then come stay again later in the week.

Yesterday we had lunch at a small Mexican restaurant in Praça Mauá. Normally, we eat at a simple per-kilo place near my apartment in Santo Cristo. The food there is good, honestly excellent for the price, but a per-kilo restaurant is never cosy or welcoming.

It is hard to talk at ease in a place like that, especially on a weekend, when what you really want is a bit of quiet and room to breathe.

The Mexican restaurant gave us that room. We talked, daughter to father, in a way that felt unhurried, and I think Yasmin needed it. I think she needed to say some things that had been sitting heavy in her for a while, feelings and thoughts she had not had the space to unpack.

I think it was good for both of us.

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been carrying a deep, nagging sense of guilt about going no contact with Julie.

I know I needed to do it, but the guilt has been hard to sit with, at times overwhelming, and this morning it hit harder than usual. I think yesterday’s open conversation with Yasmin stirred something in me too.

I cannot fully explain it. All I know is that I woke up with such a heavy weight of guilt that I unblocked her number and sent a short message, apologising for doing it. I was not trying to open a door back to something, or to reconnect. I just needed time and space to gather my thoughts.

What I understand now, or think I understand, is that Julie, in moments of anger and frustration, does not know how to communicate without causing hurt. She does not stop to consider what the other person is feeling. It is almost as if her real goal in those moments is not to communicate at all, but to wound, to belittle, to put the other person down. Only then does the job feel finished to her.

I do not believe you have to hurt someone to feel complete, or right, or whole. You can say what you need to say, defend what you believe, without leaving a trail of damage behind you.

What I am describing, in the simplest terms, is assertiveness: standing up for your point of view and saying what you think or feel without setting out to judge, belittle, or hurt the person across from you.

This pulls a thread back to my childhood. Our father left when my brother and I were young, and separated from our mother. We stayed in contact with him for a while, until eventually he gave up on us completely.

After a lot of reflection, I can say honestly that my mother was, and still is, a narcissist, or at the very least deeply toxic. I had thought that going back to England, at her request, in her old age, might be different this time. It was not. If anything, it became clearer than I remembered.

Going back further, to when I was a child, I remember my mother beating us almost daily, with whatever she could get her hands on, and me more than my brother. The punishment was never really finished without at least two, three, sometimes four slaps across the face.

One memory stands out clearly. We were all packed into my grandfather’s car, ready to leave for a family holiday in Tenby, Wales, with my grandparents along. We were still outside our house in Wollaston, in the West Midlands.

I cannot remember what I said or did to set her off, but she hit me across the face, not once, several times. It was obvious even then that she was not going to stop until she felt she had hit me enough.

It was so clear, so plainly wrong, that my grandmother, her own mother, told her to stop and said out loud how disgusted she was by what she was watching: a mother who needed to punish her child by slapping his face over and over, who would not feel the punishment complete until she had delivered enough of them.

What I am trying to say, and maybe not saying it well, is that some level of discipline is normal. As parents we have to set boundaries, because children without limits grow into adults who cannot function.

I have never hit my daughters, or their mothers. But then and now are different times, and even by the standards of then, what my mother did went far past discipline.

Maybe slapping a child was seen as ordinary once. But what my mother did, pushing punishment to that exaggerated, repeated extreme, was not discipline. It was cruelty.

That kind of cruelty, that need to go further than necessary, says less about the child being punished and more about the person doing the punishing: their insecurity, their need to hurt someone else past the point of reason. I recognised a smaller version of that same pattern in Julie.

If I was not dancing to her tune, the knives would come out, the slurs, the belittling, sometimes loud, sometimes quiet and covert, but aggression all the same. Left unchecked, it grows like an untreated cancer, and it will take your self-esteem, your sanity, and your sense of worth with it.

What I am saying is that I saw pieces of my mother in Julie, and that is why I had to go no contact. Nobody talks enough about the part that comes after that decision: the guilt that floods in once the door is closed.

I believe people who behave this way need to hurt others to feel strong, so they never have to look inward. Looking inward would only remind them of their own emptiness, their own low self-esteem, maybe even self-loathing.

Still, the guilt and grief of going no contact became too much to carry, so I cleared my conscience, unblocked her, and apologised, not for her sake, but for mine. We have to keep looking inward, not outward at everyone else.

In bed by 10 p.m.

Thank you

Thank you for reading. Please explore my other posts and share your thoughts in the comments.

Richard

Photos by Richard George Photography

The post Blue Skies, Buried Guilt | A Sunday in Santo Cristo first appeared on The Long Gringo.

It is Friday, exactly one week since my tooth extraction, and today I take the last of the medicine.

Carnival has filled Rio’s streets, but my week has been much quieter than the city around me. From last Friday to this Friday, it’s been carnival, and I have worked and stayed home more than anything else.

I went out once or twice to walk around the surrounding neighbourhoods. Street parades passed through the area, and crowds of people were revelling in the streets, joining the processions or making their way to and from them.

With only a few classes on Thursday after Carnival, I have had more time to focus on my blog and YouTube channel.

My mornings have been reserved for exercise, swimming and some skipping. My early-morning routine has changed a little, replacing skipping with swimming, which is both good and bad.

The change is good because swimming is excellent exercise, and this is probably the first time in my life that I have done it regularly. I swam reasonably well at school as a child, but that was 40, almost 50, years ago.

Since then, in my adult life, I have swum occasionally in the sea or in a pool, but never regularly or seriously; now, for the first time, I am, and I’m enjoying it.

The bad part is that swimming is replacing skipping.

Sometimes I manage both, but it is difficult. It is a reminder that our time, energy and resources are limited. We cannot do everything to the fullest, so choosing one thing often means giving up another, at least for a while.

I love skipping, and I’m reasonably good at it. In some ways, I think it is more effective than swimming. However, while I am living in this condominium, it makes sense to make the most of the swimming pool while I’m still here.

At weekends, I can usually fit in both: skipping first, exercise next, then swimming to cool off. But the precise routine matters less than continuing to move. They are all good for me, especially at my dinosaur age.

Most men my age have given up or do far less than I do, so if we commit ourselves daily, we are already profiting.

The intensity depends on our mood, condition, and how we feel each day, but at least we are doing something. Perhaps this is what life is really about: doing something, especially something that helps us improve, directly or indirectly. What matters is not finding the perfect activity or path, but continuing to act.

Whatever we do will bring obstacles, problems, and setbacks, but they’re part of the game and the process, and ultimately test whether we pass. If we pass the test, we move to the next level. If we don’t, we stay where we are until we find a way through. Otherwise, we keep hitting the same brick wall until we learn to improve, adapt and overcome it.

We supposedly learn through mistakes or suffering, and mistakes often bring some form of pain. If we are wise, we eventually become better people.

Life is brutal, and whatever we choose will be hard in one way or another. Every path brings consequences and some form of suffering, directly or indirectly. In the end, it is a question of acceptance, getting your shit together and facing reality as it is.

Be kind and be happy. If you cannot be happy, still be kind, but never be naïve.

After a quiet week of recovery, work, exercise and reflection, I was in bed by 10 p.m.

Thank you for reading. Have you ever had to set aside one good habit to make room for another? Share your thoughts in the comments, and please explore my other posts.

Richard

Photos by Richard George Photography

The post Swimming, Skipping and the Choices We Make first appeared on The Long Gringo.

We’re back home in Rio after three days in Paraty, the historic town about 200 km down the coast. It wasn’t quite what we’d expected, with so much rain.

Even so, we got to see a little of the town, and more importantly, Julie did too. We took a speedboat trip around the bay, visited some beaches and islands, and generally relaxed together, with a few good evenings in the bars and restaurants downtown.

It’s much hotter in Rio than almost anywhere else in Brazil, or so it feels. Sometimes I think Rio must be the hottest place in the whole country, which is probably not entirely true. I once spent a week’s holiday in Porto Seguro, in southern Bahia state, more than 1,000 kilometres north of Rio and much closer to the equator.

In theory, the closer you get to the equator, the hotter it should be. But when I flew back from Bahia and landed in Rio, the moment the cabin crew opened the door and we stepped off the plane, the heat hit us like a brick wall.

Rio was clearly hotter than Porto Seguro!

Parts of Brazil’s interior, including the states of Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul, are scorching. They’re home to the Pantanal, the vast wetland that’s legendary in Brazil and around the world as one of the most biodiverse, and hottest, places on Earth.

Further north, the Amazon rainforest straddles the equator itself, so it’s hot there too. From the Tropic of Capricorn all the way up to the equator, around 95% of Brazil is hot, and in some places, Rio included, it’s ridiculously hot, especially in summer.

In the morning I worked on the computer and uploaded a video to YouTube, which pleased me no end. I helped Julie with some housework, and together we unpacked and got everything back in order after the trip.

We headed out for lunch at our local per-kilo restaurant, and once again, Julie was impressed with the food.

Afterwards we took the VLT tram and then the metro down to the South Zone, specifically Leblon. I thought it was about time she saw one of the most exclusive neighbourhoods in Rio, if not all of Brazil.

We got off the metro at Praça da Paz in Ipanema, meaning to walk along the beachfront. It was hot today, too hot for Julie. The sun beat down on us with barely a cloud to soften it.

Along the beachfront promenade we walked in the direction of Leblon and São Conrado. At the far end of Leblon rises a mountain and the Vidigal favela, separating Leblon from São Conrado.

Avenida Niemeyer is the road that winds around and through that mountain, connecting the two neighbourhoods, clinging to the cliffside as it climbs.

Near the start of the avenue there’s a viewpoint with parking and a few kiosks where tourists and locals sit, eat and drink while looking out over both Leblon and Ipanema beaches. It’s a good spot to relax, take photos, and grab a bite.

We bought a beer at the first kiosk and found a table with a lovely view over the rocks and the beaches below. The big umbrellas gave some shade, but the sun still found its way through, and we were slowly roasting, Julie especially.

It was too much, so we moved on, heading into Leblon proper to make the most of the shade from the buildings.

Avenida Ataulfo da Paiva is Leblon’s high street and main shopping strip, just as Rua Visconde de Pirajá is Ipanema’s, both lined with some of the best boutiques and labels in Rio. Every so often as we walked, Julie stopped to look in shop windows or duck inside.

We stopped at Talho Capixaba, the well-known café that was once a favourite of Rio’s rich and famous. I’m not sure it still holds that reputation, but it was as busy as ever, and we sat down for two large coffees.

I wanted Julie to see Talho since she works as a barista, and I thought the experience would be useful for her, a chance to broaden her sense of the trade.

The coffee was very good. Not the best we’ve had together in Brazil so far, but very good all the same. We didn’t linger, and soon continued our walk towards Ipanema.

After about fifty metres we turned down a side street, and I remembered a famous cake shop nearby called Kurt, which I’d visited once before. I wanted Julie to see it too.

Inside, the shop was immaculate: the cakes, the Brazilian snacks, the décor, all perfectly arranged. Even the staff looked the part, hair pulled back, uniforms spotless, just the right amount of makeup on the women behind the counter.

What struck me was the owner, a woman well into her nineties, sitting outside and watching everyone who came in. The shop was already full, so she came in herself to serve us.

We hadn’t planned on having anything since we’d just had coffee at Talho, but her warmth won us over, and we ended up ordering more coffee and sharing a slice of cake.

Julie chose a lemon curd puff pastry. We sat outside under an old tree beside the street, drinking good coffee and eating an excellent lemon curd tart, in one of the best cake shops in Rio, in one of its best neighbourhoods, on a perfect day.

How good is that? We paid, and before leaving, I went back in to thank the owner for such a warm welcome.

Further down the street, I remembered that the old Odeon cinema is now a Decathlon store (you actually take an escalator down to get in, rather than up). We ended up buying trainers for us both, my treat, and an 8kg kettlebell, Julie’s treat for me. I’d always wanted a kettlebell to train with, and now I finally have one.

Continuing down towards Ipanema, we made one last, unplanned stop that turned out to matter just as much. Just off the main street is one of Rio’s most famous and traditional chopperias, Bracarense, a true carioca institution in Leblon and across the city.

A chopperia is a bar that specialises in chopp, Brazil’s light, cold draft beer, a bit like lager, still fermenting when it’s served.

I used to go to Bracarense twenty or thirty years ago, back when I had a lot of friends in Ipanema. We’d spend the day at the beach there and often stop by Bracarense on the way home.

When we arrived, there was a row of high bar tables and stools along the pavement by the kerb. The bar itself now has a glass conservatory you pass through to reach the main counter.

Bracarense was buzzing as always, every table inside full, people eating, talking and, above all, drinking chopp, brought round by an army of quick, soldier-like waiters in white, precise and unhurried, making sure your glass was never empty.

We chose to stay outside at one of the high tables. We ordered two chopps, enjoyed them, then ordered two more, and then two more again, until more than an hour and a half had passed and we’d lost count of how many we’d had.

I ordered a saideira for us both (the last two chopps, plus the bill). I wasn’t drunk, chopp isn’t strong, it’s a fairly light beer, but I was tired and ready to head home and relax. Julie, on the other hand, was in great spirits.

We crossed to the other side of the street and waited at the bus stop, and almost immediately a bus heading all the way home pulled up. It was Friday evening in the South Zone, so traffic through Leblon, Ipanema and Copacabana was heavy. The metro would, in theory, have been faster, but I didn’t have the energy for the crowds.

We got on the bus and, luckily, found two good seats. The air conditioning was working, so it wasn’t too bad after all. Within the hour we were home, and I was completely worn out.

In bed by 9 p.m.

Thank you for reading. Please explore my other posts and share your thoughts in the comments.

Richard

Photos by Richard George Photography

The post Heat, Coffee, Cake and Chopp in Leblon first appeared on The Long Gringo.

Today is Tuesday, and it’s been a productive day. I journaled twice, worked on four separate videos, and got through my daily classes as always.

I have never felt so productive with video work. The truth is, I have only been doing it since October of last year, but even in that short time my output has grown enormously.

My journaling has come just as far. What used to take an hour or more to write now takes about half that time, and more importantly, the quality has improved. My writing, my vocabulary, and the whole way I put words on paper have come a long way since I started journaling.

Today is also the first day in almost two weeks that I have not been coughing constantly. Exercise has been on hold because of it, but I think tomorrow I will ease back in, starting with skipping and kettlebells, and swimming too if I am really back to normal.

Beyond the classes that have been part of my life for so long, my priorities right now are exercise, writing and journaling, and blogging and video creation.

Looking back, since I began each of these disciplines separately and independently of one another, it gives me real pleasure to see how much I have improved and evolved in each. The few people who have had contact with this new work of mine have acknowledged its relevance and worth, and that means something.

I have said before that external validation is not the final goal, and I still believe that. But when someone chooses, unprompted, to tell you your work is good, it is a quiet confirmation that you, I, or anyone else is on the right path.

Money isn’t the be-all and end-all either. It is welcome, and it certainly helps you keep going, but what matters even more is knowing for yourself that your work and your craft are good and relevant.

Think of how many painters, writers, and other talented people were never recognised in their own time, only later, and sometimes only after they had already died.

That does not change who they were or what they made. They were still talented, still creative, maybe even ahead of their time. What changed was time itself, and everything that shifts along with it: circumstances, situations, people, time again.

Thinking about it this way, time can work for us or against us, depending on where we stand and what we expect from it. One more piece fits in: truth, an important factor that lives alongside everything else in our lives. Truth is the fundamental, final partner of time.

Truth does not always appear when we want it to. It can be staring us in the face while we remain blind to it, not because we are careless, but because we are not ready yet, or because we do not yet have the tools to receive and fully understand it.

But given enough time and the real journey we follow, truth eventually finds its way to us. Not always as we expect, but what we once couldn’t understand simply reflects our capacity to understand at that moment. Over time, it becomes clearer as we prepare.

My whole life in Brazil, my daughters, past relationships, and more recently Julie, have shown me that, over time, who I am matters more than anything else, not for others, but for me, for you, for my well-being and yours, and for the well-being of those who truly love me and you.

Even though the skills I have picked up have not brought much monetary reward so far, I am certain they have made me better, not just for myself, but for the people who matter to me, in this short life I get to live on this crazy, complicated planet.

Be kind and be happy. If you cannot be happy, still be kind, but never be naïve.

In bed by 10 p.m.

Thank you for reading. Please explore my other posts and share your thoughts in the comments.

Richard

Photos by Richard George Photography

The post A Productive Tuesday | Notes on Time, Truth, and Doing the Work first appeared on The Long Gringo.

I think I was taught, from a young age, to put myself second, to forget my own needs in the name of others.

And even when I did exactly that, it wasn’t always met with kindness. Sometimes it made me feel inadequate. Small. Wrong for even trying. I don’t say that looking for sympathy. I say it because I think understanding where a pattern started is the first step to actually changing it, and I’ve been doing a lot of that lately.

The Trip That Made Me Think About This

On my last trip to England, nothing I did was enough for my mother. I don’t say that lightly, and I’ve turned it over enough times to be fairly confident it’s not just my perception of a bad week. I think that because I wouldn’t play along with a certain dynamic, and because that refusal clearly registered with her, she pushed back more than once, suggesting I wasn’t good enough, wasn’t doing things right, and was arrogant.

Julie did something similar around the same period, even though I never once criticised her or tried to put her down. And that’s the part that sits strangely with me: there seems to be an odd double standard at play in these kinds of dynamics.

It’s fine for them to project onto others. But if you don’t return the favour or don’t have the energy to defend yourself against it, you’re the one who ends up judged for it. You’re the one labelled difficult, or cold, or arrogant, simply for not absorbing something you didn’t create.

I’ve thought about this a lot, and I think the honest answer is that my mother and I have probably projected onto each other over the years, in different ways and for different reasons. And because I didn’t take the bait this time- because I didn’t escalate, didn’t defend myself loudly, didn’t play the game back I think it actually got worse, not better. Silence isn’t always read as maturity. Sometimes it’s read as an insult in itself.

Knowing What Not to Say

I know myself reasonably well at this point. I think of myself as an empath, which is both a strength and a liability, depending on the day. It means I have to be careful with what I say, because I understand, maybe too well, that when someone tries to hurt you, it’s usually because they’re hurting inside themselves. Cruelty is rarely about the target. It’s almost always about the person delivering it.

That understanding doesn’t make the cruelty painless. But it does change how I respond to it. I know I can be cutting if I wanted to, to find the right handful of words that would land exactly where they’d hurt most. I know that about myself clearly.

And precisely because I know it, I try hard never to use it. There’s a kind of restraint that only makes sense once you understand the weapon you’re choosing not to pick up.

If that restraint is a form of power, and I think it is, it wasn’t given to me. It was forged, the hard way, out of defending myself against my mother’s cruelty, both as a child and on visits since. It built something in me: a shield, and behind the shield, a wall. I don’t keep them raised all the time.

I only bring them out when I truly need to, in situations that call for genuine defence rather than reflexive defence. That distinction matters to me. A wall you raise for everyone isn’t protection; it’s isolation. A wall you raise selectively, when something is actually at stake, is just good judgment.

What Confidence Actually Is

I’ve spent a lot of time recently thinking about the difference between confidence and arrogance, partly because I’ve been accused of the second when I know, as clearly as I know anything about myself, that what I was showing was the first.

Confidence, as I understand it, comes from genuine self-belief paired with real competence not a belief in your abilities that exists independently of evidence, but one that’s actually earned through experience. It shows up as self-assurance, yes, but also as humility, and as a genuine willingness to collaborate and take feedback from other people.

Confident people don’t need to be right all the time, because their sense of self isn’t riding on being right. They can hear “you made a mistake” without hearing “you are worthless.”

There’s a quieter source of confidence too, one I think gets overlooked: not breaking the promises you make to yourself. We talk endlessly about broken promises to other people: the friend you let down, the deadline you missed for someone else. But I think breaking a promise to yourself is worse, in a way that matters more long-term, because nobody’s watching to hold you accountable except you.

And when you keep those promises, consistently, quietly, without anyone else ever knowing you made them, you become something close to unstoppable. Not because you’re suddenly talented. Because you trust yourself. And trust, once it’s built between you and yourself, is very hard to shake from the outside.

What Arrogance Actually Is

Arrogance looks similar on the surface, which is exactly why it gets confused with confidence so often. But underneath, it’s the opposite thing wearing similar clothes. Arrogance is an inflated sense of self-importance, and it’s rooted not in strength but in insecurity a deep, usually unexamined insecurity that needs constant reinforcement from the outside. It shows up as dismissiveness toward other people’s ideas, an unwillingness to learn or be corrected, and a real, sometimes striking lack of empathy.

Here’s the clearest way I’ve found to put it: confidence is internal, and it radiates outward. Arrogance is a mask, worn on the outside, to hide an emptiness that exists inward. One is built from the inside out. The other is built from the outside in, and it collapses the moment nobody’s around to reflect it back.

I think that last row might be the most useful test I know of. Ask whether the quality would survive in complete privacy, with no one watching and no one to impress. Confidence does. Arrogance, stripped of its audience, tends to evaporate.

The Actual Skill: Looking Inward

When you have real self-awareness, you know who you actually are the good parts and the difficult parts. Your strengths, your talents, the things you do well without trying. And also the things you’re genuinely not good at, the flaws you’d rather not look at directly.

Knowing both, honestly, without flinching from either, makes you a rich person in a way that has nothing to do with money or status. It’s a kind of wealth most people never bother accumulating.

Most people spend the majority of their energy looking outward at other people, at circumstances, at what’s happening to them, and very little energy looking inward, at what’s happening in them. But I think the real power sits in the opposite direction.

What happens outside of us isn’t really the thing that matters most, as strange as that sounds. What matters is how we handle it internally. That’s the real skill of living well, and nobody teaches itdirectly. You have to work it out for yourself, usually the hard way.

Your good side deserves nurturing. Don’t hide it; don’t downplay it to make other people comfortable. Use it deliberately to keep growing. Your flaws deserve something different but equally important: honesty. You don’t need to hide them. You need to know exactly what they are, sit with that knowledge without shame, and work on them steadily.

That’s the only mechanism that actually produces change. Hiding a flaw preserves it. Naming a flaw is the first step toward outgrowing it. I’m actively working on mine, not as an abstraction but as an ongoing project I return to regularly.

The power, in the end, is in knowing yourself fully, honestly, without editing the inconvenient parts. Don’t look away from that. If you do, you risk losing sight of who you actually are, and that’s a much harder thing to recover than most people realise.

Be kind and be happy. If you cannot be happy, still be kind, but never be naïve.

In bed by 9 p.m.

Thank you for reading. Please explore my other posts and share your thoughts in the comments.

Richard

Photos by Richard George Photography

The post Confidence, Arrogance, and Knowing Yourself first appeared on The Long Gringo.

It’s Friday, the end of the week. I’m a little tired, and honestly, my feelings are mixed right now.

But when I step back and look at things analytically, I’m okay. Better than okay, actually. And I think it’s worth writing down *why*, because the answer isn’t dramatic; it’s boring, in the best possible way. It’s routine.

The Work Itself

Work is going well. Classes with all my pupils are moving smoothly, and if anything, I’d happily take on one or two more students. But I’ve noticed something interesting: the free time I have right now, the time that isn’t filled with teaching, isn’t idle.

It’s not time I’m losing. It’s time I’m investing in the blog, in video editing, in planning what comes next. There’s a difference between free time that drains you and free time that compounds. This is the second kind.

That distinction matters more than it sounds like it should. It’s easy to treat unstructured hours as a break from “real” work, something to be filled passively. But when you deliberately redirect that time, it stops being a gap in your schedule and becomes the foundation of whatever you’re building next. Right now, for me, that’s the blog and the videos.

Proof in the Numbers

The blog is the clearest evidence I have that something has actually shifted. I’ve posted every single day for at least two months now, without missing one. Not once. That might sound like a small thing, a streak, a number on a calendar, but anyone who has tried to sustain a daily creative habit knows how easily it falls apart.

Motivation is unreliable. Some mornings you don’t want to write, edit, or post anything at all. What gets you through those mornings isn’t inspiration. It’s structure.

The Order of Operations

Here’s the actual mechanism behind the shift, because I think the *specifics* matter more than the general idea of “being disciplined.”

Making my bed is still the very first thing I do; that hasn’t changed. But the second duty, the one that comes before coffee, before freshening up, before anything else, is now preparing and posting a blog entry. That’s new.

It used to be exercise. I used to make my bed and then go straight into a workout, and I genuinely love training early; there’s nothing wrong with that instinct.

But somewhere along the way, I realised that posting the blog first was more productive for the way my day, schedule, and responsibilities actually function.

There’s a particular kind of satisfaction in knowing a post is live before 9 am, before I’ve done anything else that day, before the day has had a chance to get complicated, distracted, or reactive. It means the most important creative commitment I have is already handled while the day is still fresh and uncluttered.

Everything after that is a bonus. Everything after that is easier because the hardest, most important thing is already done.

I don’t think this is really about willpower. It’s about sequencing. Put the thing that matters most where nothing can interrupt it, and it gets done. Put it at the end of the day, competing with fatigue and a dozen other demands, and it becomes optional,  something you’ll “get to.” Order changes outcomes.

Why Repetition Beats Motivation

I don’t want to credit this shift entirely to reordering my morning, though. I think the bigger factor is simpler and less exciting: practice. The plain, repeated, unglamorous act of doing the same task, in the same slot, day after day, has sharpened something in me, a kind of technical fluency I didn’t have two months ago.

Writing and posting have gotten ‘easier’, not because the ideas have become easier to find, but because the mechanics of producing them no longer require conscious effort.

I know exactly how to move from a rough idea to a finished post now. That knowledge didn’t come from thinking about discipline. It came from doing the same motion enough times that my hands and my instincts learned it before my brain had to catch up.

And the effect hasn’t stayed contained to the blog. It’s rippled into the video editing too; the quality there feels more consistent, more homogeneous, in a good way. I think that’s the real payoff of a daily practice: it doesn’t just improve the thing you’re practising. It raises your baseline everywhere because you’re training a general capacity to show up and finish things, not just a specific skill.

Where I Am With It

I’m proud of what the blog has become. I want to say that plainly, without hedging it, because I think it’s important to actually notice progress when it’s real. There’s still a long way to go, and plenty to improve; that’s always going to be true at any stage, but I’m moving steadily in the right direction, and that steadiness is the thing that feels good. Not a single breakthrough. Just the accumulation of showing up.

CONSISTENCY. PRACTICE. DISCIPLINE

I keep coming back to those three words because I think they’re underrated. We tend to romanticise talent, luck, or big moments of inspiration. But almost everything I’m proud of right now traces back to those three unglamorous pillars, applied daily, without exception.

And I don’t think that’s unique to blogging or video editing. I think it applies to work in general, to relationships, even to how we rest and recover. Anything that compounds skill, trust, health does so because of repetition, not intensity.

The Videos

On the video side, the numbers tell their own story. I think I started around October of last year, so I’m under a year in, and I’ve already produced and uploaded at least 150 videos. That’s not a small body of work, and the quality has come a long way in that time, noticeably so, especially in this most recent batch, which I’m still finishing and uploading to YouTube now.

Honestly, this recent batch is making me feel proud of the work again, in a way I hadn’t quite felt in a little while. There’s a particular feeling that comes from looking at something you made months ago and seeing clearly how much you’ve improved since, not because someone told you, but because you can see it with your own eyes.

That’s a good feeling, and I don’t think you get to feel it without putting in the repetitions first.

If there’s a takeaway here, it’s a simple one: the routine isn’t the interesting part. The interesting part is what the routine makes possible: the compounding, the quiet confidence, the sense of actually moving forward instead of just staying busy.

Consistency doesn’t feel dramatic while you’re in it. It just feels like Tuesday, and then Wednesday, and then, two months later, you look up and realise something has genuinely changed.

Be kind and be happy. If you cannot be happy, still be kind, but never be naïve.

In bed by 9 p.m.

Thank you for reading. Please explore my other posts and share your thoughts in the comments.

Richard

Photos by Richard George Photography

The post Consistency | Practice | Discipline first appeared on The Long Gringo.

Parenthood does not become simpler when a child reaches adulthood.

The questions change, but the uncertainty remains: when should we give guidance, when should we step back, and how much of the present is shaped by the past?

It is Monday, and Yasmin returned to her mother’s this morning instead of last night. Later in the evening, her mother, Nalva, sent me a message complaining about Yasmin’s behaviour towards her. She described Yasmin as being abrupt, rude, and almost impolite, even though Yasmin was defending herself against her mother’s complaints.

I know that Yasmin is an adolescent, and adolescence can be complicated. It is a period of profound physical and psychological change, a bridge between childhood and adulthood.

I am not a psychologist, and I have not researched the subject online or elsewhere. I can only speak from my experience of raising two daughters, which has left me feeling that adolescence can be especially complicated for teenage girls.

Before travelling to England to visit my mother, I shared a flat with Nalva and Yasmin.

I had given up the flat I was renting in Copacabana because the landlady needed it back. Since my trip was already planned, I decided to move in with them rather than rent another place beforehand.

I stayed with them for almost 6 months, longer than initially planned. The first couple of months were OK, but as time passed, Yasmine began to have problems with me, and I, in turn, had problems with her.

During her school holidays, I tried to give her tasks and encourage her to take more initiative, believing it would help her. Instead, it made things worse. The atmosphere in the flat became unbearable and, at times, toxic. By the end of my stay, leaving for England felt like a relief.

Another occasion was in December of last year, when it became clear to me that Yasmin was not taking her studies seriously and that they were clearly at the bottom of her list of priorities.

When I tried to confront or even talk to her about it, she declared a passive-aggressive war against me for at least three to four months.

Only after almost six months, with a lot of patience and the dust settling, did our normal relationship return. Yasmin has told me various times that her mother and I should not be together, which I sometimes find strange, as children usually want their parents to get back together or be together.

When I have asked her about such a mentality and her way of thinking, she says that she and her mother are completely different, which, in a way, is very true. However, I feel that there is more to it. Is she jealous of one or the other?

When both are good together, does she prefer to be with us 1-to-1 rather than be with her mother, so that she does not have the relationship and attention divided in any way or form?

Or is it that if I support her mother, or her mother supports me in an action against her, she would feel intimidated, weak, vulnerable and without control?

I think it may be a little of each, or perhaps none of them. I honestly do not know. What is clear is that Yasmin is now a young woman with a very strong personality, undoubtedly inherited from both her parents. She is no longer the little girl who endured bullying, psychological abuse, or abandonment from her mother when she needed her most.

For me, this is the heart of the problem. We often reap what we planted in the past, and that is true of many things in life, including the relationships between parents and their children.

My own personal example is my mother with her two sons, my brother and me, and the respective family members, daughter-in-law’s grandchildren, etc. My mother has four grandchildren with zero contact with all of them, and what Contact they have had over the years has left almost bitter feelings on both sides.

Although I say all this, I have also come to believe that nearly every family I know is dysfunctional in one way or another. As Yasmin’s father, I want her to become a balanced, interesting and fulfilled young woman.

I know that is a lot to ask, but it is what most parents want for their children. At the same time, there is only so much that I, or any parent, can do. Eventually, we have to trust them to take responsibility for the lives they are building.

She will be 19 in June, and even though I’m there to help and guide her when she wants or needs it, she also has to do her part and pull her weight in her own life, with her own goals, aspirations and responsibilities.

As for Nalva, I have reached a point where I no longer feel responsible for her choices. That may sound harsh, but it is honestly how I feel. I am not her father, and I believe that without my help she would be in a much more difficult position today.

Am I bitter about the past? No, I am not. Perhaps I was for a while, but that belongs to the past. Now I want to enjoy whatever time life still gives me.

Be kind and be happy. If you cannot be happy, still be kind, but never be naïve.

In bed by 10 p.m.

Thank you for reading. Please explore my other posts and share your thoughts in the comments.

Richard

Photos by Richard George Photography

The post When Guidance Becomes Letting Go and a Parent’s Uncertainty first appeared on The Long Gringo.

It is Sunday, and I will take Yasmin to her ENEM exam.

ENEM is a national Brazilian exam for all pupils who have completed or are about to complete second grade at school and intend to attend university, particularly federal and some state and private universities.

It is a national vestibular exam, which makes it extremely difficult and competitive because you are not just competing with pupils from your region, but with students from all over the country. It is considered one of the most difficult and unfair vestibular exams in the world.

The second session is today; the first was last Sunday. In the past, ENEM took place in a single session, but it is now divided across two consecutive weekends. Once pupils receive their final marks, they use a government online platform that connects applicants with universities across Brazil. Their score, chosen subject and intended profession all shape which courses they can apply for.

It’s more sophisticated than I’ve described, but it is basically this.

Yasmin is sitting ENEM as a treineira, something like a practice candidate, because she still has one year of secondary school left. She is allowed to take part this year, but her result will only count officially when she sits the exam again next year.

However, if next year’s marks are worse than this year’s, she may use this year’s score. Good luck to Yasmin and to the millions of other pupils who waited outside schools at midday today and last Sunday to sit ENEM, an exam that could help define their futures.

I had worried that taking Yasmin to the exam would leave no time for my early-morning routine: exercise, journalling and writing a blog post. Then I unintentionally woke at 4:30 and managed to do everything before leaving home at 9:45.

The idea was to take her to the local Portuguese baker for breakfast before the exam, as we did last week, but Nalva suggested we have breakfast at her place, which was good because I got to save some money.

When I arrived at Nalva’s and Yasmin’s, Perola was the happiest to see me, as always. It always amazes me how this simple little mongrel dog is so expressive and charismatic in her own way. I had some coffee, and Yasmin and Nalva had breakfast. At about 11:30, Yasmin and I left to take her to the school where she was taking the regional exam, on the same street where she lives, about half a kilometre away.

On the way there, we talked and talked. I tried to give her pep talks about life, the difference between acting and reacting, and just doing her best on the exam. If she does her best, then whatever the result is, it is what it is for that moment in her life.

When the school gates opened, I kissed her on the forehead, as I always do, wished her luck and asked her to message me when she had finished or arrived home.

The exam was in Botafogo, and since I was already there, I decided to walk through the neighbourhoods towards the city centre, then take the VLT tram back to Santo Cristo.

My route would take me through Flamengo, Catete and Glória. Last week, I had followed more or less the same route along the beaches beside the Bay, but this time I wanted to explore the streets inside the neighbourhoods.

Rio is beautiful along the coast, with its beaches and the Bay. Yet the streets inside these neighbourhoods have a beauty of their own: leafy roads, local shops, and open bars and restaurants where people drink and eat outside. It is lively, intimate and mesmerising all at once.

In Catete, I wandered around a handicraft fair. On Sundays in Glória, there is a sprawling open-air market selling fruit and veg, handicrafts, clothes, collectables, homemade food to eat on the spot and craft beer. You name it, they sell it there.

Yet beyond the stalls and commerce, what makes the market truly sublime is the movement of thousands upon thousands of people from different backgrounds and communities.

During all of this time of my walk, I was buying 0-alcohol Heinekens. I haven’t drunk alcohol in two weeks, which I think is very good, and I’m very proud of it; more importantly, I’m not missing it- that is, the alcohol.

The Sunday fair in Gloria is famous in Rio, and it has mutated and grown, now sprawling into neighbouring public parks like one of those monsters you see in old sci-fi films that gets uncontrollably bigger and bigger and bigger.

It is enormous, and what I have come to realise is how popular these fairs are here. We who live here take them for granted, but when visitors come and go to such a place, it blows their minds.

I love walking around Rio on a fine day, drinking zero-alcohol beer and taking photos. What more could one want? As I wandered through the fair and along the side streets, camera in hand, I realised again how much I love photography, especially street photography. It is organic, spontaneous and natural, beautiful in its simplicity, and both artistic and rewarding.

I passed Marina da Glória without stopping and continued to Santos Dumont Airport, where a VLT station is just outside. Rio de Janeiro is so unusual that it has an airport in the city centre, facing the Bay. It traditionally serves shuttle flights between Rio and São Paulo, although it also serves other destinations in Brazil.

Back in Santo Cristo, near Guarabira’s bar, I had another zero beer and stopped at the local supermarket for food before heading home. Later, I worked, watched some TV and tried to relax.

Be kind and be happy. If you cannot be happy, still be kind, but never be naïve.

In bed by 10 p.m.

Thank you for reading. Please explore my other posts and share your thoughts in the comments.

Richard

Photos by Richard George Photography

The post ENEM Exam Day in Rio | A Sunday Walk from Botafogo to Glória Market first appeared on The Long Gringo.

There are two kinds of nothing.

There is the good kind, the nothing you choose: doing nothing, going nowhere, speaking to nobody, not working, perhaps not even eating or drinking. That kind of nothing feels like freedom because you chose it.

Then there is the other kind: the nothing imposed on you. When an unplanned void is forced into your day, nine times out of ten it is not freedom. It is frustration, inconvenience, or something actively working against you.

Today began reasonably well. I made my bed, had coffee, meditated, stretched, exercised, did my wheel, and went down to the pool to swim 30 lengths.

Then I came back upstairs to work and found the day’s collection of nothings waiting for me: no Internet, my sites down, again even with a connection, no gas, and my infernal toothache back in my tooth, mouth, and face. There was no peace, only pain. And, to underline the point, still no gas.

• Nothing on the Internet. Nothing working.
• Nothing of my site, The Long Gringo.
• Nothing from the gas supply.
• And, above all, nothing resembling peace.

I went downstairs to speak to the woman who represents the building’s internet company. She listened, logged the problem, and promised a technician that afternoon. I waited. He arrived after his 5 p.m appointment, which was apparently fine by him.

The fault was in the building’s main electronic exchange: someone had changed something or put the wrong cable into the wrong port. How can something so small be so stupidly disruptive?

At least it was not only me. Many people in the condominium had the same problem, so the fault was identified and fixed that day. A small victory, but I was taking victories wherever I could find them.

My site, however, was still down.

I may have foolishly deleted the cache. I asked Alessandro to take a look and, with Carnival approaching, I hope he can sort it out beforehand. I am not panicking, but it is inconvenient and probably the result of my own ignorance in IT matters.

Then there is the gas. Of course, the column of apartments where I live has had the worst of the leak problems. The whole building’s supply was shut off, but our final column has proved more complicated. It may take another ten days to resolve, almost a month after the problem began, and all that time without hot water.

WTF!

The upside, surprisingly, is that cold showers may be healthier, and we are still in the Carioca summer. So, in truth, it is not the end of the world. Nobody is going to die from a cold shower, unless they decide to use an electric hair dryer while standing in it. Apart from that, we should survive.

Peace is something I have learned to appreciate while living in Brazil.

The government often seems permanently at war with something or someone, yet ordinary people keep reaching in the opposite direction. In almost every situation or celebration, the first thing they wish you is peace.

I do not have complete peace of mind at the moment because Julie is there and I am here. Since the beginning of the week, however, I have decided to walk away. I have tried before, and she reeled me back in like a fish, but this time I think it is finally over. I miss her, yet I also feel more at peace, and for that I am grateful.

Pain and peace rarely share the same room. I can endure pain, but not the sleeplessness that comes with it. After several bad nights, the exhaustion was beginning to affect everything.

I had booked an emergency appointment for Saturday to remove the bad tooth. Then I imagined two more nights without proper sleep and asked whether the dentist could bring it forward to tomorrow. Kindly, she did.

I also had to buy medicines before the surgery. The website I ordered them from failed to deliver in time, so I went to a chemist and bought everything again, more money, more stress, less peace.

People say that when something good is coming, when life is about to change or upgrade, you must first suffer a little or pay some price. Right now, I am choosing to believe that is exactly what is happening.

The situation with Julie, the constant trouble with my site, the lack of gas and a proper shower, the Internet failure, and, in its own way, the way Yasmin is with me are all weighing heavily at the moment.

I know these are tests, ordinary parts of life dressed up as personal attacks. I also know that I, you, and anyone else still have the power to decide how we meet them, and whether we pass or fail.

In bed by 9 p.m and only two hours of sleep.

Be kind and be happy. If you cannot be happy, still be kind, but never be naïve.

Thank you for reading. Please explore my other posts and share your thoughts in the comments.

Richard

Photos by Richard George Photography

The post A Day Full of Nothing first appeared on The Long Gringo.

Last night was my first at my new address, and the first time in a year and a half that I had slept somewhere entirely my own.

After so long sharing space with other people, the quiet felt wonderful. I also tried to go to bed earlier than I had while living with Nalva and Yasmin, when bedtime was usually after 10:30 or 11:00 p.m. Last night, I was in bed by 9:30. It was not perfect, because earlier would have been even better, but it was a very good start.

I want to return to the healthy routine of being in bed by 9:00 p.m., or earlier if possible. I learnt the value of an early night about ten years ago, and I have loved it ever since. Nine o’clock is perfect for me. Anything earlier feels sublime.

My Google watch has an app that estimates how much sleep I get and how well I sleep. I do not know how accurate it is, but I have used it to track my sleep since buying the watch in England. During the year and a half I spent living first with my mother in England and then with Yasmin in Brazil, it recorded only two nights when I slept for more than six hours.

On my very first night here, I had already passed the six-hour mark.

Over the next couple of months, I hope to build on that and reach seven hours a night. Seven feels right for me: eight seems too much and six too little.

I have heard different opinions about the ideal amount of sleep and whether the hours before midnight are especially restorative. I cannot say how universal those claims are, but they reinforce what I already know about myself: I feel better when I go to bed earlier, and seven hours seems like the right goal.

Whatever the science, I slept far better than usual in my new place. Of course, the comfortable double bed probably deserves some credit too. It is a considerable improvement on an uncomfortable sofa bed.

Tomorrow is Teachers’ Day, so I decided to turn today into an extra day off. With no work tomorrow and the schools closed today, the children will not return until Wednesday. I used the opportunity to organise the flat and deal with the small jobs that come with settling into a new home.

In the morning, I bought a set of bathroom scales online. The shop could not deliver them, so I arranged to collect them in Ipanema. I also needed to pick up my new glasses from Dona Vera in Copacabana. These will be the last glasses I buy from her for a long time. I am very happy with my recent pairs and should not need any more for at least the next hundred years.

Before setting out, I gave the flat another thorough clean and visited the local supermarket. It was much better than I had expected: clean, well organised and reasonably priced, with helpful staff and, importantly, no bad smells.

I wandered around the neighbourhood too, getting a feel for what it had to offer and stopping now and then to chat with the locals.

In the early afternoon, I walked ten minutes to the nearest metro station and travelled to Ipanema to collect the scales. From there, I took a bus to Copacabana for my glasses, then another bus home. It dropped me outside Rodoviária Novo Rio, the city’s main bus and coach station.

My condominium is only half a kilometre behind the station, but the walk takes me through years of memories.

When I lived in São Paulo and worked as a consultant, and even earlier, when Jessica was one or two years old, I travelled between Rio and São Paulo many times a month. I would leave on Friday night, arrive on Saturday morning, then make the return journey from Sunday night into Monday.

Back then, the station was a bit of a dive and hardly welcoming, especially at night.

Now it feels surprisingly polished, almost like a small shopping centre, with marble finishes and smart shops. These days, getting home means walking through a place full of old memories, then continuing for another ten minutes until I reach my new front door.

It was a full but satisfying day. The flat was cleaner, the errands were done, and for the first time in a long while, I had a quiet place that felt entirely my own. By 10:00 p.m., I was back in bed, ready for another night in my new home.

Be kind and be happy. And if you cannot be happy, still be kind, but not naïve.

Thank you for reading. Please explore my other posts and share your thoughts in the comments.

Richard

Photos by Richard George Photography

The post A New Home, an Early Night and Old Roads first appeared on The Long Gringo.