Dear Solitude Seekers,
How do you feel about being alone?
I love it!
I don’t fully buy into the introvert/extrovert split. Our personalities are more malleable than we want to believe, and when we go through different seasons in our lives, our personality evolves.
There is no real-life sorting hat or Greek god parentage that dictates your future, talents, capabilities, and proclivities. Instead, our personality is a complex mix of DNA, epigenetics, environment, and choices.
However, while I have moments where interacting with people energizes me, most of the time, social situations drain me. I love talking about ideas and bouncing around theses with other passionate thinkers. But nothing restores my sense of peace and well-being like a lengthy period alone.
The feeling of only doing what I want to do is exhilarating. No compromises. I wouldn’t want to live alone for long, but a day to ramble alone is heaven—especially if I’m near the ocean.
Solitude is when I synthesize the ideas pouring into my head via newsletters, podcasts, TV, and social media. It’s where I evaluate my thoughts, and most importantly, I’m almost always alone when I make my best art.
What about you? What does being alone o for you? Do you crave solitude, or does it make you crave company?
About the Art
I wrote this haiku last year when I spent my birthday rambling on the Oregon Coast on a solo trip. It was one of the best days of my life. I’ve wanted to turn it into a comic for a while, but until I found this illustration of the ocean from a Scandinavian book of fairy tales published in 1914 by Kay Nielsen, I wasn’t sure how to bring it to life.
Here is the original image:
I love how the waves look like Hokusai’s iconic Great Waves Off Kangawa.
I cut out the ocean, converted the Nielsen image to greyscale, and printed it out. I colored it with my watercolor brush pens and uploaded it.
I wanted to make something with an eerie green color scheme. The sky was hand drawn by me with my watercolor pens and then digitally smeared. I also drew the mountain in the background but digitally altered the color scheme to match the rest of the drawing.
Creative Challenge:
Explore what solitude means to you. Write a 100–200-word story/poem/stream of consciousness rant about what comes to mind when you hear the word solitude.
Be the weird you want to see in the world!
Cheers,
Jason
WOW! Challenge accepted! 😀👍🏻
Solitude is vital for me. It's when I regenerate and when I create. I do love time with family and friends, but always retreat afterward. Time with others exhausts me, no matter how much I love it. I'm a true introvert. Which isn't to say I can't be vibrant and outgoing or that I don't enjoy the hell out of a lively exchange of ideas.
Anyone who knows me well has seen this pattern. Anyone who has remained a friend respects it. My family just assumes I'll disappear into my room after any kind of gathering, no matter how outgoing I was during it.
I think the form our inborn nature or, if you will, how it's expressed, changes throughout our lives. And, like anything we like to try to neatly label, introversion and extroversion are just two ends of a continuum, with all permutations lying between.