Some days, I don’t even pull back my blackout curtains and allow the sun to enter my room. I roll out of bed, make my way downstairs, and re-position myself on the couch with some food and my dog. The blinds remain pulled down, a candle is lit, and I walk on my treadmill. I thumb through Instagram, watch Netflix, shower, and return to bed until I have to go to work. Some days, it’s like this. Some days, it’s necessary.
There are times when I just don’t want to be found by the day. I will revel in my own mind, work on paintings, write, or just do nothing. I don’t know if it’s depression, or anxiety, or just a plain lack of desire to interact with the outside world. I don’t know if I’m considered anti social during these times, or an introvert, or whatever label is out there to describe my behavior. I do know, however, that time to myself, regardless of whether or not I open my blinds, is vital to me and my mental well-being.
The world has a tendency to be unbelievably overwhelming. There is saturation of social media, news, opinions, and people seeing only what we want them to see. Some of us are over-worked, some heartbroken, some who wake up plain disappointed in the way our lives are panning out thus far. During these moments, I find it absolutely imperative to take care of ourselves. Unplugging from the world for a day used to be easy – you just didn’t answer the house phone. Someone left a message on your machine, maybe they’d drive past your house to see if you were home, but it never went beyond that. We used to have a reprieve of at least 24 hours before our friends or family began to worry about our whereabouts or what we were doing. Today, it’s like if you don’t post on social media, or send a Snapchat, or create an Instagram story, something must be wrong. People begin to pry or question partly because they care, and also because as a whole entitlement has set in regarding access to each other’s lives.
When we put ourselves in “it,” we open doors for others to view us and what it is we experience. Often times, though, the negative we experience is not something we tend to share with the world. For me, negative happenings in my life are often shared once I find a solution to them, however I personally feel I’ve lost touch with the ability to share bad experiences with someone else in real time. Problems tend to travel in packs and pile up in a sensory overload that challenges emotions and rational thought and that is when I allow myself to disappear from the world, at least physically into my own home. I’ve trained myself to isolate in order to come up with solutions to my problems, and I still haven’t decided if this tactic is ultimately good or not. I try not to shut down, rather, take a big step (or three) back from everything I’m doing in order to get a more relaxed view on what I’m dealing with.
Entropy is unavoidable. It is how the world works, and it is something that we as free-thinking bipeds challenge on the daily due to our overwhelming desire to control. It’s like putting yourself in Manhattan at night – all the lights blinking, the noise, the smells, and then suddenly you’re overwhelmed to the point where you hate the city or you’ve been in it long enough that you’re numb to the random acts and happenings. I find myself being a person who gets overwhelmed with the world sometimes, and that is when I walk away. Similar to the city, the further away and higher up you find yourself, the more melodic it all seems. The noises are reduced to a dull roar, the lights twinkle at random and in harmony at the same time, and everything is illuminated but not in your face. Entropy in modern – the world from a distance – the unavoidable from a peak, makes me appreciate the problems I once hated.