Thank you for unintentionally inviting me into a blogger challenge, Steve. Giving my nope page a break, here is a random list of silly things I hate right now.

1. How it feels when Anja sees me journal on my iPad in bed
2. How YouTube envelopes me in an embarrassing amount of brain rot
3. How the shoes I bought on Vinted didn’t fit at all
4. How I can’t figure out what produces the dishwasher error despite varous attempts at solving the issue
5. That the house smells like onions even if it did result in an enormous amount of delicious onion confit
6. That I have to pay for films on Apple TV, for which I am already paying
7. That our indoor plant game is off this season
8. That we painted our wall pink
9. That my glasses never really get clean anymore
10. That I don’t have a single, perfect, unified app for quantified self stuff

Not so silly

1. Toxic wokeness
2. Witnissing the delight White people take in me speaking with them about toxic wokeness

They open their roti takeout, unfold their pancake, and start eating. Strike a pose, there’s nothing to it. I ask them if it’s okay that I watch them eat before I start, so I can see how in the world I’m supposed to eat sauce without cutlery.

I edit my biography in a community app for Black professionals. Other people use the flags of their heritage, and I decide to do the same. Which one goes first, 🇳🇱 or 🇸🇹? I was born in the Netherlands, and consider myself not Dutch per se but definitely an Amsterdammer. Truth be told, I’ve never been to São Tomé and Principe, and the parent who hails from there left when he was ten. I wonder, brushing my teeth before bedtime, whether it’s appropriation for me to use the flag. And then I think of all the brown and Black faces I know, doing just the same, and entirely dignified and correct in doing what they do. It’s one of the prices of growing up Black in a white environment: I wonder when I’ll stop feeling like I’m the racist.

• I am a Black person with privilege
• My privilege makes me uncomfortable
• I don’t want to think about racism
• My childhood experiences did more damage than I realized
• There are so many things I’ve said “yes” to that required a “no”

I am on a 33-day streak picking my teeth before bed. I’ve designed a temptation bundle, pairing the activity with a few minutes of garbage television. During these days, I’ve made it through two seasons of Love After Lockup and six seasons of Sister Wives. It shouldn’t surprise you that my watching habit has extended well beyond the time it takes me to pick my teeth. Earlier this week I decided to tone it down and return the temptation bundle to its original intention. Not because I want to watch less garbage television, but because I don’t want Sister Wives to end.

Sometimes I
feel that I am
a
bad
Black
girl
because whenever
my white girlfriend
and I sift through
Netflix
Prime Video
or anything
with a reasonable trial
period
and she says “let’s
watch this
movie or that”
featuring Black stories
I instead
elect to watch a white
narrative
because it’s nice
to forget
about
racism
and the teacher
who called me
a monkey
and
the no one
who called him
out
and
being a bit
Black
and being
a bit
white

Steer clear of Adidas; obtain a degree in Dutch language and literature; wear my aunt’s glasses until I eventually need my own prescription; don’t eat fried chicken; proclaim I’m a fan of Michel Houellebecq; don’t go to a black hair salon; enrol in theological seminary; don’t listen to RnB; date a person blacker than me; date a person whiter than me; don’t eat watermelon; say I’m ‘accidentally black’ because my mother met my father while on vacation and I missed by only an inch the opportunity to be born to a white father who was a doctor, by the way; eat bananas only after I cut them into bite-size chunks that I eat with a fork, just to make sure I don’t remind anyone of a monkey; don’t listen to rap music; learn difficult words.