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Essay 1 min read Eliza Marsh

Long walks, no phone

I have started leaving my phone at home on Sunday afternoons. The world rearranges itself almost immediately. The trees are still trees, but I notice them again.

The experiment

It started as a dare to myself. Two hours, no pocket buzz, no quick check. The first half hour was uncomfortable in a way I wasn’t expecting — not boredom exactly, but a kind of restlessness in the hands.

What came back

Attention, mostly. The slow kind. The kind that notices that the bricks on the corner house are three different shades of red, and that the man at the bus stop has been reading the same book for three weeks.

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