the corner office

My final post on solitude: has any of this really made a difference?

In some respects it's hard to say. If it's good for your mental well-being, how do you measure it? I wasn't solitude-deprived before, how do I calibrate for the changes I made? It's not like I was MISERABLE before and feel AWESOME now. How do you decide that staring into space and thinking about things without music is better than staring into space and thinking about things with music? When is staring out the window on a train better for you than reading a book? Sometimes I do one, sometimes I do the other, I can't say which is better.

What I can say, is that having tried some of these things, I keep doing them, and that has to be uh, saying something.

I've become more open-minded about "boredom". Maybe it's just awareness, maybe it's just a slight attitude change, but I feel less averse to being bored. And I enjoy letting my mind wander, and I do it more often than before.

As for waiting in queues and so on without a phone, it no longer bothers me, and in fact, not only does it not bother me, I rather like it. Beyond the opportunities to just be with my thoughts, I like being free of the itch. It's a small thing, but it's liberating.

I mentioned previously the small 'literature' of pro-solitude books, and a number of them are now on my reading list. I've always had an interest in solitude and that's been re-awakened, slightly. If I think the small changes I made brought benefits, what else is possible?