We brought waters and some snacks (fruit, nuts..) and Jeff got a nap in. It felt safe, I still kept my backpack with our important things like passports etc close to us. Larger suitcases all go in to a middle section that isn't monitored, so if Croatia ever becomes like Rome or Paris then be careful at the different port stops. You'd have to stand by the bags every time the ferry stopped at another island to let people off. One lady had my exact same luggage and accidentally almost grabbed it when we got back to Dubrovnik from Split, which is an honest mistake that can happen. I am referencing Paris and Rome since many travel videos online lately have been tourists warning other tourists of bags being stolen at train stations, smaller airplanes and buses when it comes to stops. Lots of thieves in these places, even if we kept being assured that Croatia was safe, my only comfort there was that Jeff actually got up and checked at the stops. I'm not saying you have to, just sharing what we did. 

We arrived at Hvar around 4pm, and just pulling up to the island was breathtaking. Instantly I knew why this island was one of the top places to visit, and why my best friend chose to get married here. The hotel we stayed at was called The Amfora. https://www.suncanihvar.com/amfora

You walk off the ferry, and you start to wonder how you're gonna get to the hotel with all your bags along the cobblestone streets. I asked a local standing close to the port what the quickest way to the Amfora was and he pointed to a white van with another man standing beside it. "Bring that guy your bags and he will take them to the hotel." Umm, what? I've seen this in a movie before... and no, that's not going to happen. Turns out this is the standard, these hotels have these vans come and pick up the guests bags so you're not walking so far with them, but they don't take the guests. They give you two different paths to choose from to get to the hotel, which feels daunting at first, but assure you that your bags will make it to the lobby safe. We still kept our backpacks and loaded up our things in the white van along with several other passengers from the same ferry (that was an added comfort), and we set off on foot through the town to get to the hotel. 

Our first argument came up around this time. Jeff took this pathway up these steps and through a back neighborhood when I wanted to take the path alongside the ocean and restaurants, but he said this way would be quicker even though it looked.. not as cute. I don't want to use the word "sketchy" at all in this beautiful town, so the best I can come up with right now is "not as cute". It was a quick disagreement, a moment of doubt I had that we were going the right way, but I shook that off and let him lead the way, sure enough, he got us to the hotel. 

At the beginning of this vacation, we did tell ourselves that we would be treating this like the honeymoon we never had, so there were these moments throughout where I'd have to remind myself to act like a newlywed, and you know what? This is actually great advice to use all the time. You're kinder, more patient, there's an added gentleness to your responses. I bet my husband is reading this now wishing I would continue on with this persona. 

We got in to the lobby and yes, you're supposed to go to the registration desk initially but I waltzed right over to the massive outside patio space and just took in that breathtaking view. The resort-style pool below and the most beautiful, scenic ocean views past it. I didn't even care to see the rooms yet, I wanted to go walk along that shoreline and soak this all in while the light was still out. Getting to the rooms was interesting. The hotel layout was a bit confusing, and you can tell in recent years there's been additions, new "wings" and older "wings" so there's what seems like random sets of stairs throughout. This place is NOT stroller friendly. We saw some younger couples with babies and strollers and they were not having an easy time with the stairs. Remember, you're not in America, so not every staircase comes with an automatic pathway for wheelchairs or strollers. Even the elevators are small in certain parts of this hotel! You cannot be obese and fit in these elevators with your bags. Jeff and I barely fit in the elevator with our luggage. We had to take videos to show the children. If you're too big to fit in the elevator, you have no choice but to take the stairs; which really makes sense in more ways than one. 

Do I get to the part yet where the only out of shape people we saw during this entire trip was tourists? Every local we came across was in shape. I've never seen so many 70+ year old men and women in good shape! Makes sense when you're walking everywhere and your food isn't overly processed toxic sludge. Most of these cities are walkable, you don't really see many cars and the people with cars cannot drive them in the cities. Even the vans picking up luggage have to take a back ways out and around. 

We were all checked in, freshened up and ready for an evening of walking, eating steak, meeting up with my best friend (who will be married in a couple more days on this stunning island) and for Jeff, grabbing more gelato. 

I'll be sharing some of the welcome dinner and wedding on its own separate post, but for this one, enjoy the views to Hvar. If you're wondering if we had a preference between this one and Dubrovnik, I would say both are equally charming and worth seeing, but if you were to go to Croatia with children, plan to stay in Hvar a little longer. Plan for a day or two of the trip to just relax and swim and eat delicious fresh food. 

Hopefully you're all enjoying the read and these updates, I usually don't wait over a month to share about a journey/adventure we took. A lot of it I had to sift through photos and remind myself "oh yes, this took place too!" It's different than it being fresh in my memory. After the Croatia vacation we were back home for about a week and a half and I was off again for a month-long "road trip" with the children, so I still have to share some of that. One day I'll get caught up with the stories. For now it's a lot of reminiscing, and I'm back to feeling that even if it's just my mom and some friends who read through the post, I'm good with that! 

Upon entering the charming Old Town, I gotta address this: I am not a fan of the QR scan codes everywhere and the massive banners out (maybe this is just during the Summer) with advertisements right at the entrance of Old Town. It made it feel like you were walking in to an amusement park, which completely downplays the feel of this ancient city. I wonder if locals who grew up there are as irritated by the looks of it. If I was in charge here, I'd remove all of that. The claim is that Dubrovnik was founded in the 7th century, and I know that massive banners aren't exactly graffiti, but when you look around at the rest of the place its simply too grand to be putting ugly banners with QR codes up, along with the countless game of Thrones gift shops everywhere. There should have been a town vote or something. Two Game of Throne gift shops, max. One on each end, one in the front of town in case someone doesn't want to walk all the way to the end, and one at the end of town in case someone wants to exit out that way with the other drawbridge and not have to go all the way back. Counting over a dozen shops that had Game of Thrones memorabilia within the first 20 minutes of being in the (I almost typed park just now..) city walls, was not the best first impression. I was also not thrilled that as soon as you turn right past the beautiful fountain by the entrance, there's a Hard Rock Cafe. -_- REALLY? 

We had this one goal that first evening, we were looking for the restaurant down a cute alleyway. Yes, it was to immediately get that "we are in Europe and having a proper Monsanto-free/gmo-free meal surrounded by charming old world buildings" feel. We were in luck, since there's 100s of those to choose from. I'm glad we continued walking past the Hard Rock Cafe. There will be people standing outside waiting to greet you and seat you. Many with 10% off vouchers or signs. Most with similar menus. Risottos, pastas, salads, lots of seafood. Lots of Mediterranean/Greek influence but with more seafood. This makes sense, you're right along the Adriatic Sea. I can see why so many people make it a point to visit these places when it's not tourist season. I chose to get lost in the beauty of where we were, really had to shake off the initial "this is gonna be a money pit" feeling, in the pit of my stomach. Another reason we were grateful we didn't bring the children: the food costs! "Well yeah Talia, you're in the coastal parts of Croatia, in JUNE". I know, I know. Let's just say if we brought all the children, even if everyone ordered water (which isn't free at restaurants btw, it's the same price as any other beverage, so if I was still drinking wine that would have been a great excuse), we'd be spending over $400 a day if we ate out for lunch and dinner with our family of 6. We were also told by several travel vlogs that in Croatia, there's no tipping. Well, perhaps a decade ago, and perhaps inland where there aren't as many tourists, but every single restaurant we went to had the tipping recommendation on the receipt. I'm telling you, this likely became a big deal after Game of Thrones came out, because once again, it brought so many more Americans to Croatia. And Americans love to tip. Not that I didn't want to tip, we would tip either way, but I felt this was important to note in case you're watching a travel vlog and think you just don't have to.. it's suggested on the receipts. Maybe the locals ignore this? Maybe the other European travelers who aren't used to tipping ignore this? 

We did make sure to bring cash. The rookie mistake was not exchanging it at the airport once we arrived or doing this prior at a bank before leaving. The exchange rates were diabolical, the US dollar is definitely down, and the ATMs and banks there have high fees to take your worthless dollars and give you back euros. The only saving grace is that paying in euros in most places there saves you money, since the store owners prefer cash. Their taxes are even more diabolical - 25%! Many shops would tell you one price, but if you paid cash they would tell you the cash price. We were in a tough spot the first week because we also only had an AmEx, which almost every place in Croatia didn't accept, except for boutique hotels. But we likely broke even with the amount of "it's 25 euro, 20 if you pay cash and not card" type of offers we got all over the place. Farmers markets that took place daily only* took cash, which was great. 

I don't even remember the first few restaurants we ate in. Like I mentioned, they're all very similar. The food, all sourced from the same places. Flavors all the same. Very fresh, still delicious, but you really gotta go there to know exactly what I mean by this, and I don't say it in a way that's rude. It just is what it is! There were TWO very memorable meals from the visit to Dubrovnik. One was in a restaurant above the Jesuit steps called Restaurant Kupon. This is where they specialized in rooster. We ordered... you guessed it. The capon on the menu! http://restaurantkopun.com The scenery is beautiful and the service was fantastic. One of my favorite parts about dining in Croatia is that the country has this NO RUSH mentality. They will not drop off your check until you ask for it. There is no server rushing you to order, get a dessert, leave.. it's incredible. 

The other restaurant I will always recommend and can't stop talking about to this day is LOCAL. Jeff and I saw a youtube video on this place, and he made sure to get us a reservation for a Sunday night dinner. They offer 2 services a night. https://local-dubrovnik.com  This was an experience! Their specialty is PEKA. Slow cooked veal (or octopus) under a metal lid/"iron dome" on an open flame, with coals on top. This is like an ancient instapot. Family run, local ingredients, a brother and sister working together to greet you and serve you, the mother plating the appetizers and baking fresh bread daily. You were completely transported to a family's home. Felt almost like you stumbled in on a family eating, and they invited you to stay. You feel different at first, almost out of place, but the smells and the flavors and the hospitality is so genuine that you stick around for more. If you only had a day in Dubrovnik, go to LOCAL. 

And also, walk that city wall. It's worth the $40 euro to get a birds eye view of the entire city. It's a long walk, be prepared to move your body and get a good workout in. That $40 euro ticket also gets you access to all the museums in the city. Jeff and I aren't big museum people (partly because I think most of our history is a lie or at best, very fabricated), so we did one museum only and part of that was to get some AC. I don't want to discourage others from museums, so I won't elaborate too much because it's not a hill worth dying on. Too many other things I care about. I also got in to some (hilarious) "trouble" lately with calling an ugly Picasso painting, well.. ugly. Couldn't believe the outrage, truly. But back to the wall walk... wear comfy shoes. Look at the shoes you wanna bring and really consider "can you go up hundreds of steps with me?" Those are the shoes you wanna bring. There's resting spots, but it's a lot of ups and downs and you will get your exercise that day with just walking this wall. The JUICE. My husband wants me to warn you all about the juice. No, not that juice, actual juice. Fresh-squeezed orange juice that is offered at the first rest stop. It was $10 euro. You try to justify spending that because hey, "while in Croatia!", so they bring you this small cup (American standards? Maybe this was a regular sized cup in Croatia) with the orange juice, you don't wanna feel robbed... until you walk a little further to another rest spot, and that same orange juice is "half off". Say it with me: BOO! Just bring your own water or beverage to this, I mean, unless you wanna try this juice, in which case, wait until you get to the second or third rest spot, prices just keep dropping. The VIEWS were worth it all. We really stood there in awe of every angle. Every corner looked like a postcard. 

Another thing every corner seemed to have is a stray cat! Dubrovnik (and as we learned, most of Croatia) had stray cats everywhere. They're considered Old Town's oldest citizens. We were told that the cats we saw were descendents of the cats brought in during the 14th century to assist in fighting the bubonic plague. Their mission was to catch & kill the diseased rats. I've been saying this for years, as we homestead and have taken in many stray cats in middle America: they are the best form of pest control. Instead of using rat poisons that can leach on to crops and harm other animals, cats will handle this. They are excellent hunters. This city had some very happy and pampered cats! During the year the residents all pitch in to look after them, leave them water, sometimes food. During the Summer there's tons of tourists that are happy to do this, my husband included, along with petting them. I wasn't exactly about to cuddle a stray cat in another country, but I did respect their space. We learned that locals call them "gospodske macke", meaning "noble cats". You don't have to go looking for them. They're in almost every corridor, even by the Old Harbour and the churches. 

Besides that, we did go to the harbour and book a sunset boat ride. You wanna book directly there and not with the other vendors at the entrance. They add a mark up so it's best to just book with the boat you wanna get on. The half day was enough for us. We got to go to the blue caves, the green caves, and a private beach. We swam together, got to chat with some locals and also other tourists, time flew by and we had an afternoon we will not soon forget. Most of the time we were fondly thinking about the children back home. We facetimed them from the boat to show them one of the caves. They were just getting up and having breakfast and it was a little bittersweet, we know they would have enjoyed the boat day with us. It's perfectly fine to miss your children but also enjoy time away. For sure we will come back here, and bring them all. It will likely be a different experience, which would still be special, but this time was so very needed for Jeff and I. 

We did try the water from the fountains there; tasted fresh and clean, we ate gelato at least twice a day. We both fell in love with lavender ice cream by the harbour! Not typically a flavor either of us would choose but I felt adventurous and also, Croatia is known for their lavender fields, so I figured, "this has to be decent.." and it ended up being our favorite one. 

Jeff and I never got that honeymoon. We 100% were the couple that pushed it off and kept saying "one day", "eventually", "when they children are older". We got married in November of 2009, started having babies & debt (perhaps it was debt first then babies, which led to even more debt), we lived for at least a decade financially irresponsible.. I'm going to go ahead and place most of that blame on myself, although I know if Jeff was reading this he would likely say "no, it was the both of us, I should've put my foot down", and the reason I can say this is because I've heard him utter these words when I share this verbally to others. EITHER WAY! I truly feel we weren't blessed financially back then because of this irresponsibility, and so even if we wanted to honeymoon back in 2009, we couldn't afford any better than something that maybe cost a total of $300 max for one weekend away. We didn't have help from family when it came to money, so our wedding was charged on on credit card that was already maxed out. The only good news here is that our wedding was a grand total of $10,000.00 (ten thousand, you read that correctly). The bad news is that with interest on that credit card it ended up being double that, by the time we paid it all off. 

This November will actually be 17 years married! Europe wasn't in the cards for a vacation, but my best friend (one of my closest friends since childhood.. that tender, incredible age of 12), was getting married in an island called Hvar, one of a thousand islands in glorious Croatia. Jeff and I figured, this would be the perfect chance to really make the most out of this journey abroad and instead of bringing the children along, we would make sure we took two and a half weeks to act like newlyweds again, with a bigger budget. Stay at nicer hotels, go exploring as much as possible, walk everywhere, eat whatever we were in the mood for (without being gluttons), and really have a lot of, well, time to be, well, physically... you know what. You get the picture. 

The first stop was Dubrovnik. We gave ourselves 5 days in Dubrovnik to get over any jet lag, take it easy and get some sight seeing out of the way. 

I thought I was going to talk about the flight and travel, but you know what? After having traveled internationally with young children (by myself!), it's all a breeze when you're just two adults. I don't even wanna whine about delays (we did have 3 delays) or mild irritations that transpired getting from point A to point B... because when anything seemingly went south, Jeff and I would look at each other and say "well, at least it's just us! We can manage." 

Landing in Dubrovnik, we were picked up by the hotel's SUV. You know, the kind of pick up where someone is standing there with a white board and your last name? That was an additional $65 transport to getting us to the hotel safely, and it was worth every penny, being in a new place, country we've never been to, and the cherry on top was having the driver give us all the NEED TO KNOWS about the country we just landed in. He told me to call him Z. I said "what's your full name?" "No, you're never going to be able to say it correctly." That's very bold to assume! "Tell me anyways." He says it. I say "it" because sure enough he was right and I can't pronounce or say it back to you to save my life. "Alright, Z it is!" Z tells us that in Croatia, by the first grade, children are taught English. Most Croatians speak 3 languages. He tells us about the war in 1991. What happened with his family. The division caused. He tells us how they love Americans over there, especially Bill Clinton. Wait is this a travel blog Talia or are you going in a completely different direction with this? I guess I won't elaborate. He tells us about how safe it is there. How the people are dealing with being on the euro now in recent years (it changed from the Croatian "kuna" to euros in January 2023), and how this has affected locals. Seems like we missed the window of affordability, because now the locals especially are struggling with these changes, and tourists are indeed paying top dollar. He let us know that the HBO show Game of Thrones has brought a lot of Americans out this way. Dubrovnik was the prime setting for "King's Landing". We asked if he's seen the show. He said for work, he just had to get the summary of it, but he, along with his family and relatives never bothered watching it. I told him he was better off. "It's not a family show anyways." Oh yeah, we got an earful and it was all because we kept the discussion going. Truly after 16 hours of travel time you'd think Jeff and I wanted to just get to the hotel and wash up and feel fresh again.. I didn't want Z's stories to end. I almost wished the drive was a little longer, because I had so much left to ask! 

The hotel we stayed in those five incredible days was the HIlton Imperial. 

https://www.hilton.com/en/hotels/dbvhihi-hilton-imperial-dubrovnik/

You are right outside the walls of Old Town. You are incredibly close to the Adriatic Sea. The staff was amazing, very hospitable. We felt so taken care of and in the best hands. I loved it so much, I would stay there again in a heartbeat if Jeff and I went back. If we went with the children, we'd likely have to get 2 rooms, which would have been a pretty penny (does this term make me sound old? "Pretty Penny"), so when we were undecided about bringing everyone and looking for a place months prior, we were looking in to some airbnbs within the Old Town walls. I don't care for much of what I am reading about airbnb lately..but anyhow. We were very happy with our choice for where to stay. 

The breakfasts at this hotel! Mind you, I've stayed at many Hiltons in America.. their breakfast don't look like this. It is worth it to have the breakfast included with the stay! You fill up in the morning, then immediately go for a walk to Old Town and explore. 

Many of you know that Jeff and I used to be professional wedding photographers. That feels like a lifetime ago. We did this between 2009-2019, mostly in California and then Las Vegas. We dealt with some burn-out, and while we are so grateful for the connections we made and memories captured, we are so glad to be out of that field. Admittedly for years after, we've kept our equipment locked away and only took it out a couple times a year to capture some of our own family's moments, but stuck to the phones for most of the memory capture (which is a big regret!). We took our Fujifilm and our Leica for the vacation, and dare I say we've fallen back in love with taking photos again, this time "just cause". 

I'm going to end here for the day, I'll post more from the Dubrovnik stay on the next! 

Countless videos on being “self sufficient.” If you’ve been on any form of social media for long enough, you’re likely so bored of the term by now. 😅 I don’t blame you.

Admittedly, I got it it wrong. All this time I’m on this mindset of SELF SUFFICIENCY. But I got what felt like a gut punch in recent weeks … and there’s no fulfillment in “self sufficiency”. The real joy and fulfillment is in DIVINE DEPENDENCY.

Strengthening my walk involves a daily surrender of the ego. While it’s great to garner skill sets and learn how to be more self-sufficient as a family, it shouldn’t be the main premise where we miss the point entirely. God intentionally fed His people the daily manna they needed while stranded in the wilderness, to teach them dependence on Him rather than dependence on their own abilities to secure what happens tomorrow. The amount of times we prepped as much as we could, yet so much remained out of our control. Weather, mostly (and yes I know this is more often a man-made issue).

But back to manna from Heaven! Each morning required fresh trust, fresh obedience, and fresh reliance upon the faithfulness of God and His promises. The confidence of my family should rest in the truth that He will always provide for His children. This beings me great comfort knowing it’s all out of my control regardless! What a weight lifted off my shoulders. This fact can either leave you feeling even more overwhelmed or can take that burden from you. I choose the latter.

With each passing day I am learning that spiritual maturity is found in strengthening my personal walk daily, which requires me to humbly admit: “I can't, but He can." This also means to choose gratitude over complaining, trust over panic, deep breaths over heart palpitations, & daily fellowship with God instead of the desire to be so self-sufficient.

Human nature longs for security, control, and visible guarantees about the future. We often feel safer when we can store up enough resources, plans, or answers to remove every uncertainty ahead of us. I’ve heard from lifelong off grid folks out this way that there’s a huge difference between prepping and homesteading. One is more like hoarding, the other is the actual day to day. I’ll have to elaborate on this more in a future post.

This is also why people shouldn’t write books until they’re much older. Thank GOD I followed my instincts on that one 😩 I knew the majority of the beginning years were going to be more failures than successes, and in no way am I qualified to teach on this while I live it out.

I was turned off by the notion of “blogging” for years. I’ve had too many posts removed and previous sites with endless hours of writing just taken down entirely. I used to do the “mom blog” thing back in 2011. Went from a back and forth blog with my sister to my own site. All Wordpress of course. The only reason to look back on such things these days would be for pure nostalgia and perhaps to cringe at my old self - it’s important to cringe at your old self every now and then, that’s growth! Also, it’s a great reminder that you’re constantly growing/learning/adapting to the new, and it reminds you not to make the boldest of claims with words like “always and never”. (You’ll still use these words by the way, we all do, shrug it off and just continue to create better habits and find better filler words.)

Besides the cringe factor to older write ups, there was a deep bitterness to losing everything because most of it wasn’t by choice. Consider all our Myspace accounts. No warnings, just.. adios. How about my hotmail account where I meticulously saved thousands of back and forth emails from my late teens and early 20s. Only to now.. not even have access to it? I used an aol back up email for my hotmail email, neither are in business and have been bought out, meaning the back up email is pointless when you can’t log in to that one either. Which leads me to: Photobucket. Yes PHOTOBUCKET. The once FREE place I was able to stash older digital camera photos before the iPhone 1 came out (is it even called iPhone 1 or just iPhone?). Granted, half of these photos should never see the light of day without my permission but we’re talking photos from my bachelorette, photos from Jeff and I in our dating years, photos from our baby shower, some photos he took of me while pregnant with our first. I cannot access any of these. We all replaced those digital cameras with the cameras on our iPhones/smart phones and guess what? With each and every upgrade, the quality uploaded got exceedingly worse! Have you noticed this? Have you glanced back at your older uploads on social media accounts from 2011-2018 and noticed how terrible the quality looks? Remember the time you spent curating such posts? The filters you used or didn’t use, either way, the image is blurred! You remember it being crisp and clear on your screen when you took it, right?

Besides none of this saving or looking unacceptable to today’s upload standards, these apps are notorious for censorship once there’s too much growth. Some shadowy figure buys it up and now controls what can and can’t be seen, then punishes the accounts who grew organically to either stick to updated guidelines or pay the price in being flagged, shadow banned, etc. Four Facebook accounts? Twitter/X bans. Four instagram accounts… back up accounts needing to be made? Does Facebook know they took the handful of videos of my daughter’s first year and didn’t give me the option to save any of it? What kind of rat race is this? Not worth it. All that content at the mercy of new owners and whoever is in charge that year.

Do I even begin with uploading platforms and clouds that are supposed to save the videos and photos we take? iCloud didn’t allow me access to my images after the first year. They still happily took my $9.99 a month. I eventually canceled but even their latest laptops will freeze if you’re trying to upload images from your phones. Frustrating to say the least. I used to upload images to a site called PASS. They were these online galleries I could use for my clients (used to do wedding photography with my husband for 10 years, feels like another lifetime ago but we did this in CA and NV from 2009-2019), and the company went out of business! I used these galleries to store large files, even some of our family photos. I also used a service called MPix for albums. Donesky. Out of business as well. With my head hanging low I went to Snapfish. Terrible quality for prints but hey, storage for my images and I can create printable albums at least for my family to have/look through every so often.

You guys get where I am going with this? Everything in terms of storage and uploads is sub-par now. We are in the “own nothing, be happy”/”subscription hell” phase.. that is wishful thinking calling it a phase. I do feel it is all purposeful. Getting everyone used to expecting less, losing memories and just accepting that nothing really* works any more.

I won’t leave you with just a drab feeling here. There are micro-solutions.

In recent years I’ve gone back to cameras over phones. While I still use the smart phones to take videos here and there, my family photos, vacation photos - I am back to using either my Canon, Fujifilm, or Leica. I am forced to be patient and upload later, save to hard drives, upload to several spots. I print out what I write. I like that I can still access some things on TheWayBackMachine site. Have you looked in to this?

It’s interesting seeing with all this technology and “moving forward”, that lately the way forward is going back. It’s 2026 and I’m blogging again? I’m homesteading. Attempting* self sufficiency with my family as best as we can. Homeschooling? There’s so much to unpack here. I can see that this platform auto-saves, but even with this initial write up, I am already telling myself “you better save this on another platform or two in case this one goes up in smoke”. You can’t even call this mindset negative or being a downer, because it’s actually happening to countless people right in front of your eyes. Do I save this in video format too for the people who have zero attention spans and didn’t make it past the first paragraph or rely on chatGPT-like apps to summarize entire posts? Why stoop to that? I like the readers. I like the people who can sit with something. Take their time. My only issue with this is it’s through a screen. How much better would something like this be on paper, where your eyes aren’t exposed to any more unnecessary blue light. But alas, this is my option, for now. At this point I am rambling a bit. Hey, I am outta the groove since it’s been years since my last update in this form.

I couldn’t think of a better name than “dystopian diary.” I did an IG reel with this title back in 2024.. sometime in 2025 a girl used that for a website headline. Coincidence? Meh, I don’t wanna dwell on that too much. We have a lot to discuss, and I have video formats to figure out on here along with how to upload some requested pdfs. Let’s end here for the day, this was long enough for an intro post which only introduced frustrations to joining yet another app. The writer in me would throw this all in to a rough draft for weeks and fine tune it, but the slightly cynical part of me feels this is all going to be deleted and taken from me like everything else so why bother. Can you tell it was written out in one go? I’m not even going to do a read through before hitting share.