Day Five: Outside

I'm not hugely fond of the outside world. Not for prolonged amounts of time anyway. I like my teeny weeny flat with its purple walls, its books and letters, its extensive range of tea bags and its fancy coffee machine and full fridge. I make sure it smells like vanilla or tangerines (or Lush products...) and there's always chocolate in the cupboard. It's safe, it's warm and it's home...but when I'm left alone I start to drive myself crazy. If I don't have human interaction on the odd occasion, my brain starts talking to itself and sometimes my brain isn't very nice. Then when the conversation turns hostile and I start to feel not so great about myself, I want to stay indoors away from the world and it's prying eyes and suddenly...I've not left the flat in a week! I make it a priority to go out at least once a day now. Even if it's just to Tesco down the road to get some milk. It forces me to get up, get showered, get dressed and I usually even do my make up so I feel extra good when I walk out of the front door. 

However, to me there are two meanings to the word "outside". There's the world outside of my flat but then there's also the world outside of my social media. Whilst social media is incredible, it's easy to trick myself into believing that everything exists solely through my screen. I sometimes avoid saying that the world inside of the internet isn't the real world because it is. It's full of real people, real voices and real stories but I think what I mean by it not being real is that it's easier to be disingenuous online. It's easier to not be yourself, to lose your moral compass, to throw caution to the wind. Change your profile picture, change your name and all of a sudden you could say or do anything with little, if any, repercussions and many people choose that path. There's a lot of fake news, as it were. When that disingenuity becomes so prevalent, I find it incredibly easy to get swept up in all of the negativity that  gets dumped into the online world. So when I finally disconnect from my devices, reconnecting with the real world or, maybe I should say, the tangible world, becomes so much sweeter. When I shut the laptop and switch off my phone the concept of not giving those voices online a chance to echo in my head becomes feasible. My flat becomes "outside" and even just moving away from my laptop on my desk and over onto the sofa with a book feels like a holiday in the Maldives. 

For this prompt in the Blurt Self Careathon, most people, I think, will be encouraging you to go outside outside. So, I would like to be the one voice that tells you to just take fifteen minutes away from social media. Go outside...of your twitter feed. Go drink a pint of water. Open a window. Read a book for a while. Have a bath. Light some candles. Do some origami. Have a coffee, a tea, a...smoothie, I dunno. Maybe even actually...go outside! Do something other than looking at a screen for a bit, yeah? I'm all for #TeamInternet but give yourself fifteen minutes to let your eyes return to their normal shape. Give your brain a minute to eject everyone's voices but your own. The internet has a habit of sucking out rational thought every now and then so move away and let all that delicious rationality soak back in again. It doesn't matter how long you're away from it, unless something really drastic happens, the internet is always going to be there. So switch off (literally) and go "outside". 

#BlurtSelfCarethon

xxx