2/20/2025:I've known Alex since we were 9 & 10 respectively, now going into our 20s. However, I've moved every 3-or-so years since the summer of 2018, and we've fallen out of touch each time. We've always liked to hang out with one another, but we went to different secondary schools, then got busy with new adulthood. He reached out to me recently, and we met and rekindled as soon as it was possible.

On the 18th of this month, he invited me over to his new place. I got to meet his roommate, briefly, and also met the house's Long Furby (long-pile white fur, a slightly shorter tummy, made with a knockoff faceplate of the same colour). While his roommate went to see a movie, Alex & I chatted then watched some videos together in his room. It felt the same as it always has- warm and sweet. I was anxious at first, considering that I hadn't visited him and barely talked over nearly four years... but it dissipated by the end, and I'm really looking forward to hanging out with him again in the future.

We're both adults now, and gradually returning to our natural weirdness after the anxiety of being a teenager; granted, I never really had to stop, not in the same way, because I switched to homeschooling during the pandemic so thank god I missed out on judgemental teenagers... or, so you'd think. the clique-y-ness also manifests itself online. I deleted tiktok for good in the summer of 2020, and since then I've only been active on Tumblr (occasionally writing on toyhoy.se too) for "social media."

The scroll cycle is an invasive species to my brain, a habit i fell into easily due to my parents generous allowance of screentime (and the fights I'd put up if they tried to reduce it)... I just had to uproot the whole entire plant, try to only use social media as a means for archiving my artwork and seeing other peoples', which I think tumblr is pretty good for. I'm creeping back onto instagram as a way to keep in touch with people, and reducing my tumblr usage, because it's also addictive, just easier to curate than other sites. I am curious about how my media exposure (and any lack thereof) will influence my interactions with peers.

I used to be such a little jester, so immersed in the culture, but now i'm just, like, some guy who you talk to if you have something to talk about, and as an introvert I'm quite content with this. Still value community and communication and such but I've realized I'm not the passionate social butterfly I've tried to be.

I might get to meet some of Alex's other friends soon, planning to all play minecraft minigames at his house this weekend (or maybe next). I'm choosing to focus on the excitement. My mom always told me that excitement and anxiety were the same energy in the body, and of course there's some nuance because reframing associated thought and behaviour patterns is a skill to be learned persistently over life... but, she's right! I'm just feeling "the hype" for whatever might happen next.

Focusing on my personal daily schedule. I use a dry-erase weekly planner, and just added a second small whiteboard to the mix, to write down near-future plans and ideas that don't have a specific goal-date.

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1/28/2025: "There was so much time / I spent rent-free in my mind / I was radically transparent / then i reverted to the mean / But there were changes in the hardcore scene"(you should get into CHEEKFACE) | it's been a slow couple weeks, but everything over the previous year-and-a-half came at me SO quickly that "stagnation" is almost a relief. Thinking about this website again, now that the stress of my move to the big city has dissipated. This section of the website is newly repurposed. Surely I'll write something here soon.