AS I sit down to write this, some two days after Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, I still can’t quite believe it’s real. Britain has spoken. The votes have been counted. We want out. We’re leaving. It’s done. Finito.

Sub-vocalising, vocalising and typing out the words in front of me have done little to penetrate the lacquer of disbelief over the week’s events. How could this have happened? How could the people of this little island get it so wrong? What happens now? There are so many questions to consider as the dust settles, and no doubt more painful lessons to take heed of as we find ourselves in the wake of another campaign lost.

During the EU ref campaign, I once again found myself in a familiar bubble of ignorance. I had not allowed myself – intentionally or otherwise – to believe that a Leave vote was a legitimate possibility. And sure, I should have known much better. I spent two years campaigning for Yes during the Scottish independence referendum, all the while surrounding myself with like-minded people. At the time, I’d become utterly cushioned from reality – the reality that not everyone thought like me – because my own opinions and experiences were reflected back at me in the round.

Every pub conversation, every post on my Facebook feed, every interaction with a friend, they all spoke of the same thing, and so I felt safe in my decision. I felt confident that enough people out there wanted what I wanted, and that we would walk it at the polls. I mean, it was such an obvious choice, really. Autonomy was ours for the taking, if only we were bold enough to get up, stride to the polling station, brandish a stubby HB pencil and mark an X in the right box. It seemed so simple. We weren’t asking people to take up arms and fight for what was theirs. It was just a couple of lines on a bit of paper. Elementary stuff. How could such a simple plan fail?

When the No votes rolled in, my brain began to jam. This was not how it was supposed to be. Like many, I’d spent the preceding two years immersing myself in and surrounding myself with Yes culture. The meetings I attended – all Yes. The company I kept – all Yes. The publications I wrote for – all Yes. All the while, we’d been so busy elevating one another’s voices to a crowd who already believe what we believed that I’d somehow lost sight of the fact that we weren’t reaching the people who mattered. The undecideds were the king-makers. And now that I think about it, as painful as it is to publicly admit my own naivety, I didn’t spend nearly enough time seeking those people out.

Sure, I had my indy elevator pitch – the key arguments burned into my brain, ready to leap off the tongue at a moment’s notice – but I only ever had to engage it when I encountered a No or a floating voter in the wild. I did not concentrate my efforts on reaching out to those who thought differently. When I think about the days spent canvassing in the west of Glasgow, chapping on strangers’ doors (no easy task for a socially-avoidant introvert) and asking them about their vote, I realise how few opportunities I actually had to make a difference. At the time, when I’d given up my Sundays, walked streets I didn’t know, talking from the heart to people I’d never met before, it felt like hard work. And because it legitimately felt like some kind of labour, I’d allowed myself to think I was helping us to get somewhere.

Two years on, the emotional patina encasing my referendum experience is dissolving. I can finally think about my experiences without the sharp sting of hurt that accompanied such reminiscing for a long time. And with that comes reflection. If I really think about it, how many pivotal conversations did I play a part in? How many people in how many buildings actually heard what they needed to hear to help them make a decision? Hardly any, in the grand scheme of things. I was, like so many of us, just another drop in the Yes ocean. No matter how many of us there were, it made no impact on those who’d chosen to sail on a different tide.

Having come to these conclusions some time ago, as I sit here in the wake of the Brexit vote I’m especially annoyed at myself for having allowed the same thing to happen. Yet again, my entire social circle ratified my own beliefs, reflecting my own opinions back to me. And once again, it buoyed me. It made me quietly confident that there were more than enough people out there to keep the Farages and Borises of the world in their dangerous little boxes. The complacency this afforded meant that I didn’t feel compelled to put my heart and soul into the campaign for Remain. To me, it seemed that this was just a Tory in-fight played out in the public field of vision. There was a flotilla stand-off for goodness sake. Bob Geldof was involved. It was manifestly obvious that the entire Leave campaign was farcical. It was pantomime-villain politics – surely no one would root for the bad guys?

But here we are again: as with the incumbent Tory government, Scotland finds itself lumbered with a decision it did not vote for. Once again, I’m reminded that there are far more outside of my self-made security bubble than in it. And that is what we must remember. In the digital age especially, it’s easy to indulge a utopia of your own making. The work to be done in any campaign lies far beyond our own doorstep. Now that indyref2 is on the cards, I’ll be looking a lot further than the end of my nose. I won’t make that same mistake a third time.