Three years have already passed… how time flies!
This year was a very special year for this blog, which brought me a lot of joy.
So, let’s take a brief look back at what happened here and present the news for this year that is now beginning.
Digital Detox Journal
This personal productivity project aimed to reduce my consumption of digital content over the last year. Click here to find out more about the Digital Detox Project.
I loved writing the Detox Journal, in which I not only described my monthly project results but also commented on topics related to my daily life and the digital universe.
I’m already sad and miss writing this journal. Let’s see if I can resume this format when I launch the platform’s Newsletter.
GDPR and LGPD (Brazilian Law) Compliance
Finally, this platform has a cookie manager, terms of use, privacy policy, and accessibility policy, in addition to other resources that bring transparency to my readers and greater compliance with current legislation.
I will continue to implement the necessary improvements, such as adopting a premium version of Clicky to monitor the statistics of this site. With this, I will no longer know some detailed information about the profile of my reader that only companies based on the attention economy are able to provide, but that’s okay.
Speaking of reader profiles…
Where Do My Dear Readers Live?
In the last year, readers from over a hundred countries have visited this platform.
Statistics software identified most of the visitors as being from Brazil, the USA, Portugal, and the UK. European countries also occupy most of the top 10 accesses to this platform.
My country is the champion in terms of user numbers. But if I’m interpreting my statistics correctly, the traffic from European countries combined exceeds that of Brazil in terms of the volume of content accessed.
Brazilians access this platform more, but my European readers generally spend more time reading my blog than my compatriots.
British English and American English
This is one of the reasons why I started translating my texts into British English – the strong presence of European countries among my readers.
I have also been developing some valuable partnerships and professional contacts in Europe in recent years.
Another reason is that I am proficient in American English. So, translating my blog into British English is a fun way to study these slight regional differences.
Finally, my children study English using a method developed by a British school that has been operating in our country for almost a century, teaching the English language and culture.
My sister studied at this school for many years and took an exchange course in London. However, I ended up opting for an American English school, which is also very traditional and endorsed by the US Embassy in Brazil, as far as I remember.
Both accents have their charm. I don’t recall why I chose American English, but I believe it’s for market reasons and language tests for university admissions. The US influence is more prominent here in South America.
At home, I try to teach our children both forms of English, but I confess that I still haven’t fully mastered the differences.
While doing English homework with them, I found myself being corrected on my vocabulary. One kid said to another: “Mommy’s English is wrong.”
That was all I needed—years to become fluent in a language, and a cute little monster like that says this nonsense to me! I explained that there is no such thing as “wrong English” when it comes to differences between countries. It would be like someone from Portugal saying that we in Brazil speak “wrong.”
They understood, but the comment ended up being the extra push I needed to make an effort to master the differences between British and American English.
It’s not difficult—quite the opposite. It’s been a lot of fun, and the process of translating the blog has helped a lot.
Daily Vlogs in English
My productivity project for this new year also involves studying English, as happened in the ICT and English Project. It’s called Daily Vlogs in English.
The idea is to try to record a video in English of about five minutes every day. Then, I will watch it to correct my mistakes and evaluate my performance as a vlogger.
Before the reader asks, I will never be a YouTuber. I’m doing this for professional reasons. Participating in video conferences and recording videos in English are becoming increasingly more demanded in this new phase of my career.
If speaking in public didn’t come naturally to me, let alone recording videos in another language. I still have much to improve, but it’s all a matter of practice. So, let’s go!
Later, I might record a video explaining the project better and critically reflecting on contemporary media culture. While we’re on the subject of English, let’s move on to the next topic.
Exclusive Content for the Blog in English
In 2023, the blog took a short break. During this time, I wrote a series of posts on Narcissism, which began to be translated and published last year and has already become one of the most accessed content on the platform.
During this period, I also reflected a lot on the direction of my online presence.
I confess that I am concerned that my children occasionally read my blog and even open it with their teachers to show them “mommy’s website”. And there are certain subjects that they are not yet ready to understand since they are only 10 and 7 years old!
Also, I greatly value an anonymous life for various reasons, a subject that certainly deserves its own post. By anonymous life, I mean walking down the street without being recognised by anyone outside my personal circle.
Oddly enough, as a blogger, I am also concerned about the excessive exposure of my private life, which is inevitable if you have a blog like mine and want to talk about lifestyle on it.
I found myself envying Brazilian writers and influencers who live in Europe but publish their content in Portuguese. That’s when it dawned on me that I could do the same, only in English!
Of course, website translators exist. However, search engines usually deliver content in the user’s native language. Since most of my readers find me via web searches, this diminishes access to my texts in English.
In this sense, I decided to drastically reduce my exposure on my Portuguese blog. On my English blog, I now have exclusive content and expanded versions of the posts I publish in Portuguese.
This way, I can decrease my exposure in my own country.
Tropical Productivity and Brazilian Culture
The investment in the English language and the internationalisation of the blog is a movement that also reflects the changes that have been occurring in my profession.
If, in the last two decades, my focus was to bring to Brazil the best that other countries had to offer, now I am doing the opposite. I want to bring out the best of Brazil, in my opinion.
Therefore, this new phase of the blog is my first contribution towards this objective. In it, I write about productivity and quality of life from the perspective of my Brazilianness.
In dialogue with international literature, I address management, personal development and culture from the point of view of someone who lives in a sunny and tropical country.
The idea is not necessarily to make readers want to move to Brazil but to bring a little bit of Latin human warmth wherever the reader is!
In fact, just as peace and happiness generally depend much less on our external circumstances and much more on wisdom and inner attitude, it is possible to live a tropical lifestyle even when it is snowing outside your window.
In addition to a different vision of productivity, I am also writing more about my country and Brazilian culture. I realise that many of my readers are here because they want to know more about the place where I live.
If that is your case, you will probably love the new section to be launched this year!
Webmuseum Collections: A new section of this platform
At UFMG University, where I work, I approved a new extension project called the Webmuseum Project: Inclusive Management of Cultural Heritage.
This project aims to promote the extroversion of cultural collections through digital platforms, including professors’ personal collections. It has three fronts, one of which is scientific dissemination to the general public. That’s where this blog comes in; let’s see how.
One of the collections I intend to disclose in a professional digital repository is mine of photographs, with a curatorial focus on museums, libraries, archives, architecture, urbanism, art, design, gastronomy, nature and inclusive actions.
These photographs total more than 300 gigabytes of images, not to mention those that I took in negatives and slides that will be digitised.
These are photographs from more than 10 expeditions in Brazilian nature, including pristine forests, caves and archaeological sites in ruins swallowed by the jungle. Also, pictures of more than 80 cities in Brazil and worldwide were taken on trips over almost three decades. Travelling is one of my favourite hobbies!
I have visited important cities in Brazil and abroad more than once. Rio, for example, I probably went more than a dozen times. So, I have photographs that show the architectural, urban and museum changes in these places.
In the case of the blog, in addition to publishing the images and objective descriptions, I will also write affectionate descriptions and behind-the-scenes stories associated with them. The photos will also be pretexts for reflections on this platform’s central theme – productivity with quality of life.
Anyway, it will be clearer when the new section is online. Then, I will publish an explanatory post or video. I hope you like it! It has been a lot of fun preparing it. I can’t wait to put the new section online.
Thank you so much for being here!
I couldn’t end this anniversary post without thanking you, dear readers, for following me here. You give life to the letters I write, encouraging and filling me with gratitude.
Happy New Year!
