I'm awful at coming up with clever titles

I have a phone again!

Firstly, not sure if this is the right platform, but such is life when you avoid social networks, haha... but I apologize if you've tried contacting my cell over the past half-a-year or so. One day it just decided it would no longer run, and that was that. (I don't even know who's tried to contact me since- any messages from this dark period seem to have been lost to the throes of time, sorry!)

Not gonna lie though, it was a great feeling. Have you ever wanted to retreat from the worries of the world and hole up somewhere as a hermit, but still want to experience the comforts of city life? (No? Just me then?) There's no quicker way than losing your phone. No more feelings of 'phantom vibration syndrome' in my empty pockets; no more "oh no I haven't checked my phone in hours I hope I haven't missed any important calls"; just no more being permanently tethered to a little device! My anxiety and stress levels dropped so drastically that I really wasn't eager to replace the thing right away...

Now, of course, forgoing both a phone and a social network addiction in the modern day makes it much harder to actually be social. We've come to rely so much on the power of instantaneous communication that it makes people irrationally nervous to simply set a time and place and just meet (y'know, like we used to do). Thankfully, many friends and family have been gradually migrating over to Discord (a fantastic messaging service that, unlike Facebook, doesn't cost you your privacy), making it much easier to stay connected. (Also thankfully, Discord has moved away from its meme-filled 'for gamerz' appearance too, making it much less offputting for the average person.)

However, it's probably time I accept a little bit of stress- it's pretty important for motivating constructive behavior. It's been fun to ignore the real world, especially with all the madness that's been happening in it, but I really do want to finally complete the projects I've been idly blogging about so I can move on to bigger and better things. And there has definitely been progress on the Urban Tumbleweed project since the last time I wrote about it, but there's still more to do yet before I'm happy with it! Perhaps there'll be another update post coming soon, though I've said that before, so please don't watch this space too closely :P

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Anyway, this was mostly just a quick post to test if anyone's actually going to read this. Feel free to get in touch again- my phone number is the same as before, but Discord is still my preferred point of contact.
(If you don't have my Discord, it's on my deprecated Facebook page; if you don't have my number, I probably don't know you; and if you don't have either, and we actually do know each other, leave a comment below I guess?)