Once again, I would like to take a moment to recognize my witty title and give myself some warranted applause for being so darn clever.
Hehe.
Moving on.
I am someone who significantly appreciates my alone time. If I had to categorize myself, I think I’m a relatively equal balance between being introverted and extroverted, although at times I would say I’m more inclined to keep to myself as opposed to being a social butterfly.
I’ve always valued time by myself, and to be honest, I look forward to the end of the day because I allot time for me, myself and I. No one else. I watch Netflix and smoke a bowl of weed, and this window of time to conclude my day is one that grants me tremendous pleasure.
As it turns out, more of us than I thought are grateful for time spent alone, and pandemic lockdowns have proven this, according to an article by Good News Network. Have a look.
“Time spent alone during the pandemic led to positive effects on well-being across all ages, new research has found.
“The study of more than 2,000 teenagers and adults found that most people experienced benefits from solitude during the early days of the global Covid-19 pandemic.
“All age groups experienced positive as well as negative effects of being alone. However, the researchers found that descriptions of solitude included more positive effects than negative. On average, well-being scores when participants were alone were 5 out of 7 across all ages, including adolescents aged 13-16.
“Some study participants talked about worsening mood or wellbeing, but most described their experiences of solitude in terms of feeling competent and feeling autonomous. 43% of all respondents mentioned that solitude involved activities and experiences of competence—time spent on skills-building and activities, and that was consistent across all ages. Meanwhile, autonomy—self-connection and reliance on self—was a major feature particularly for adults, who mentioned it twice as often as teenage participants.
“Working age adults recorded the most negative experiences with more participants mentioning disrupted well-being (35.6% vs 29.4% in adolescents and 23.7% in older adults) and negative mood (44% vs 27.8% in adolescents and 24.5% in older adults). Experiences of alienation, or the cost of not interacting with friends, were twice as frequent among adolescents (around one in seven, or 14.8%) as when compared to adults (7%) with older adults mentioning it most infrequently (2.3%).
“The results, published in Frontiers in Psychology today, come from a series of in-depth interviews where participants from the UK answered open questions about their experiences of solitude. The team of researchers coded the answers to find shared experiences and measured quantitative data about two aspects of wellbeing associated with solitude, self-determined motivation (the choice to spend time alone) and peaceful mood.
“The researchers note that the findings were taken from one phase of the Covid-19 pandemic during the summer of 2020, and recommend that follow-up data looks at experiences of solitude during challenging periods such as this one, and also more commonplace periods where daily solitude may look and feel different,” the article says.
I guess I’m not so much of an oddball after all.
ontheedgeofeverything 