Distractions are a normal part of life, and they can build up to becoming irritating. They crowd your senses and make your experiences amiss.
I tried to get a little back in touch with reality this past week... and it was pretty great.

I didn't intend to do this, but as I started to simplify life, I started challenging myself to be even more minimalistic. Maybe it had to do with reading Emerson and Thoreau in school this past week.


Sunday:
I embarked on Banana Island. After all those holiday treats that I thoroughly enjoyed, yet were not the most efficient sources of energy, I wanted to cleanse my palate a little. It worked. I ate only bananas for three whole days, then found a head of lettuce the most enjoyable thing ever. Flavors were that more favorable.

Monday:
I was reading the Bible/praying more, and it was very helpful to my overall emotional state. When you meditate more, spend more time with God, you feel more grounded in life.
Sunday night, as I was preparing to go to school after two weeks off (it hit me like a ton of bricks), my mother suggested we read as many of the Psalms as we could. Though it made me more tired on Monday, it was the better decision.
Real life is late nights. Real life is sleep deprivation. Real life is unedited photos. Real life is bad lighting.

Real life means sometimes food isn't always pretty.

Tuesday:
That night, I deleted all my social media apps. This meant Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Tumblr, Youtube, Facebook, the works. Blogging means being relatively active on all of these platforms all the time... And it honestly gets a bit draining.
But deleting these meant forcing me to spend more personal time with people. At school, being the awkward person I am, I use my phone as an excuse a lot instead of interacting with people... But now I was forced to strike up conversation, something that's a tad more out of my comfort zone.

Late night texts. Deep conversations. Interaction.

Wednesday:
I had a banana breakfast, but I had ran out of ripe bananas to pack for lunch. Hoping my school cafeteria would have some, I headed off to school. And just that day, they didn't have bananas. But I wasn't about to eat nothing just in lieu of bananas. Instead, that day they had the most delicious raspberries. The colors were wonderful, I just had to take a picture. My friend laughed and joke, "Now what are you going to post it on?"

No better way than to break the banana streak.

Thursday:
Real life is about caring less about what doesn't benefit you, caring more about what helps you. Blogging is wonderful, but relationships are more important. Find beauty in regular life, don't depend on statistics. Find joy in adventures without feeling the pressure to edit it before presenting it. I even took a picture of my trash from dinner. Finding beauty in the unposed, in the things that aren't regularly "beautiful." The dingiest corners of real life are beautiful.



Friday:
I even deleted the Buzzfeed and Netflix apps. They were such huge time suckers, and this challenge was compounding. I started to read On the Road by Jack Kerouac.

Real life = bad lighting more times than good.

Saturday:
Well, the longest swim meet of my life. It was different without being on my phone the whole time. It was forced conversations, actually relaxing beside the pool. It was pole dancing on the flag poles. It was splashing around and mutual groaning at the delays and dragging events. It was gross soggy grounds that had hairs floating in it. But it was time with friends, and it was tiring but good.
And time with friends mean the reality of being the only vegan at your school, but loving your meat-eating friends all the same. It means going to restaurants with them and confounding your waitress, but while the Instagram may show your meal in all its splendor, there is definitely meat not two inches from your plate.

The rare good lighting, but the reality of the fact that my mother works for a hunting camouflage company.

My special vegan order.

The real picture: my friends' non-vegan plates.

Sunday:
It's been a week, I've written this post to share with you my experience of regrounding myself... And I've succeeded a bit in what I needed.
I deleted my distractions for awhile because I needed new inspiration. I needed new things to think about, new things to write about, new things to create content about.
Now, I kind of think I know where I'm going.