Have you gone outside this week?
As the names of days become elusive, the weeks are getting a little murky. Like lake water—I can’t always place right where my feet are.
Which means they’re usually scrunched up in some chair or pacing the kitchen as I make my coffee. Rarely are they outside—insert a hundred voices saying shame on you!! Stop. I don’t owe anyone an explanation as to why I’m not hiking or getting out of town and breathing fresh mountain air or renting a garden plot and becoming a tiny homesteader.
What I do owe, though, is a heaping debt to myself to remember that my body exists beyond the limits of my mind. Just like the world exists outside of my apartment—it feels like there is a center to things right now, one we can’t move away from, but a singular center doesn’t exist.
I went on a long walk around Lake Hollywood and found myself saying “this walk’ll give me something to hold onto for when I don’t leave the house this week.” I laughed into my mask and lowered my eyes to see my knees, so sunburnt they looked like little apples. I know better—I know that I am presently just as much my knees as I am my mind. Every iteration of me is a unit, a package of body and mind that may move as two, but exist as one.
Don’t forget to exist outside your space, to drain your mind into your body and slosh back and forth inside your own skin for a bit. Embody the hell out of yourself, whether it’s high up in the wild mountains or standing just outside on your steps.
No one else can do it for you.
Next Steps: Drink a glass of water, take five minutes to wrap yourself in lotion, and give your arms a squeeze—you are real.