Do you enjoy solitude?

[Shawn]

Been years since I've created a thread like this asking a broad, somewhat philosophical question, but I've been thinking about this the last few days.


No, I am not asking if you have friends, or if you are a loner. I'm asking to see which of you guys actually prefers to spend some or a lot of their time by themselves, regardless of other factors.

To me, solitude is different from loneliness. Loneliness, much of the time, is exerted on people by factors out of their control... solitude, on the other hand, is being alone by choice.

We're all lonely at one point or another, and if you choose to be alone all the time you likely suffer from some psychological issues. But, does anyone spend any significant portion of their time alone, just because they prefer it that way?

You can just give a yes/no answer or elaborate if you care to, it's a pretty straightforward question.


I definitely spend a lot of time alone, more than is normal for most people. I've never had a big circle of friends but I do have certain people who are my very good friends, yet... I could probably see them 3 times as often as I do now.

So I guess I do enjoy solitude more than what is considered 'normal'... I'm curious to see if this is something very rare or just something that most people choose not to talk about because, let's face it, it's not very cool to say you like to be by yourself a lot of the time.


I realize most of you guys probably have no interest in discussing a downer topic like this, or any topic dealing with emotion for that matter. But I just thought I'd go ahead and ask... there's a poll up top anyway.

 

[Cobol74]

Has its place in my life - time to think through things (how I chose my career and Mrs for instance) but generally I like peoples' company.

 

[Adunaphel]

Short answer, yes.

Long answer, yes, but not completely alone. I always prefer to have people near, even when i'm trying to block out the world around me, like when reading a book, or playing games, so that when i want to break my solitude, i can choose to do so. I am a person who prefers to have people nearby, but not too close.

 

[Shawn]

Interesting, two different views already.

Any possibility to make the poll private? I don't know if that's not allowed on FG or I just missed the setting. I voted yes myself, but I added the poll for those who maybe weren't comfortable typing out a detailed response.

 

[Adunaphel]

Privatised

 

[Karoug]

I'm quite happy by myself..

 

[colddayin-hell]

Solitude.

Should be my middle name.

However it's almost never by choice, but eh that's a long story.

Fkn gets me down but.

 

[Shawn]

The results of the poll so far have surprised the heck out of me!

Although, I guess a poll of another group of people might yield much different results. I mean most of us spend so much time on FinalGear, and likely other sites as well, so we all have that in common.

But this place is a form of social interaction after all, so I don't know if I would count that towards my alone time. Hmm...

 

[vRS]

When I was depressed yes. But now no.

 

[Shawn]

When I was depressed yes. But now no.

Yeah, that's a common effect of clinical depression.

But that's what I meant by solitude that's by choice. Your case is what I would call loneliness - a temporary side effect of another problem.

 

[Adunaphel]

When I was depressed yes. But now no.

Oh yes, When i was depressed because i felt like my life was going nowhere, i preferred to spend most of my time alone. Since i took control of my life and have been able to steer it towards something better, i'm liking the company of people better and better. But some activities are better done alone (and no, i'm not referring to masturbation)

 

[MXM]

Very much depends on the mood, but generally more yes than no.

Also, how do you categorize writing on this forum or ircing? It's not strictly speaking solitude, while it's not much of a socializing either.

 

[the Interceptor]

I do enjoy my solitude. I like to be around people, but I usually don't seek it.

 

[NooDle]

No. I like being alone for a while, but after a day or so, I miss the wife, the friends, the family, etc.

I do tell them to f off and leave me alone for a couple of hours from time to time, but if I had to choose I'd say it's more fun with other people around...

 

[fbc]

I have some very close friends that I see probably once a week - apart from that I'm on my own. There's choice involved in that since I could see my friends more (they wouldn't mind, but I'd feel like I'd be bugging them), I could visit my parents more often (probably should actually), and I could get out more on the weekends - but I don't as I don't mind being on my own.

I don't have a need to be surrounded by a large circle of friends - never have felt that need.

 

[Alok]

I am an aggressive social animal, I thrive in company, otherwise not

 

[watto]

I love being surrounded by friends as often as possible, even just seeing the g/f.

But every now and then, I like to spend time by myself, reading a book, walking around, going for a bike ride etc. No philosophical reason, I just like to have 'Hamish time'...

Having said that, I must vote 'No' because it isn't a significant chunk of my life.

 

[chaos386]

The results of the poll so far have surprised the heck out of me!

They don't surprise me. There are a lot of people who are shy, introverted, or otherwise can't interact well in normal social situations, who then turn to message boards and IRC as a sort of substitute.

For what it's worth, I spend quite a bit of my time alone, but that's changing from "alone on purpose" to "I've made myself alone and probably shouldn't have" over time, so I've tried to be a little more sociable going forwards.

 

[pepitko]

I voted yes, even though I liked spending most of the time surrounded by people (friends, g/f, ...) I don't mind spending some time just by myself. Go drive around in the car, go play golf for 5 hours just by myself.. that sort of thing. I think it's good to keep a balance between communicating a lot with people and blocking the world out sometimes..

 

[toma_alimosh]

No surprise in the poll results, this is an internet forum and one with a specialization (cars and car shows). Therefore, most people here:

1. have a passion and devote a good amount of time towards it
2. like to spend a lot of time on the computer
3. enjoy discussing in focused topics rather than small-talk

So there's no wonder that people on this forum like to spend more time alone.

And to answer the question:
Yes, I do spend a lot of my time alone by choice.

I like making music and creating things, thus as every artist, I spend a lot of time by myself honing on my skills and practicing my craft. You can't do this socially. If I have someone besides me looking over my shoulder and making comments, the ideas are not mine anymore. Nor do I want to ever hear: "not that way, do it this way".

Also, I like to learn. I learn a lot of different skills, all of them useful to me and to others, and the only way you learn something is if you devote time to absorbing the knowledge yourself, spending time with your friends can only improve your social skills, but nothing beyond that.

Mind you, I do enjoy a social occasion when the opportunity presents itself. Even if I'm not that involved in it. I'm a much better listener than I am a talker. As mentioned above, I'm not good with small talk. I can start a conversation about something and carry it, I can be humorous and even flirty, but sometimes people's conversations just puzzle me. Sometimes people will say the most random things for no reason at all or do the most random things out of thin air. I'm not like that. Spontaneous discussion without a purpose is just not my thing. What is that? People's attempt to get out of loneliness? They can't feel fulfilled if they're not interacting with someone?

Anyway, these social interactions aren't very often. The friends that I see at work or school I see on a regular basis (about once per week), but the friends that I don't see regularly ... I see them once a month, if even ... haven't spent time with some of my best friends in 6 months. However, i do keep in contact with those friends that I do see rarely via the internet (facebook) ... but I only post something ~2-3 times per week.

I visit FG and Facebook at least daily, though. So I guess I can't say that I'm a guy that likes to be completely alone 100% of the time, but maybe 75-80% of the time. What I can say is that I enjoy having "alone time" for extended periods of time, that most of the time I'm more inclined to choose being alone rather than with friends and that not having contact with my friends for a long time doesn't bother me.

EDIT: Oh, and honestly, I've made a small observation about some of my friends who are social animals (go out every Saturday night, go out in between Saturdays and are on Facebook 24/7): They're dumb. No, really, social animals tend to know very well what happened in the news that week and what Angelina Jolie did for the weekend, but put them in front of a logical problem like maths or physics and they'll go into a coma.

They know nothing besides the usual conversation topics that are raised to kill time and have no skills outside work or school and no hobbies whatsoever. They are also hopeless in most everything they do that's not to do with social interractions: they can't cook to save themselves, they ask "where's the start button?" when you put them in front of a Mac, they have no idea what a star is, for them Leonardo DaVinci was only a painter and they can't find Afghanistan on a world map.