Recently, I have been feeling a little lonely. A little alone in this beautiful city called Bangalore. Down with viral, there’s not much that I can do apart from limited eating outside, limited physical activity, and limited social energy.
On any normal day, badminton would be my go-to activity. I would end up exercising, learning a new skill, socializing, and clearing my thoughts. All of these are extremely important needs that I need to give time to whenever and wherever to function productively. However, in recent times, I have come to observe that loneliness seems to have also become an important component of what I am. It’s one of those necessary evils that allows me to do what I want to do whenever I want to do. It gives me a ton of flexibility and helps create an extremely malleable day. Thus, it helps me be very independent and live without any dependencies and constraints.
If I am lonely:

  • I get to exercise whenever I want to
  • Read the blogs and books that I want to
  • Give time to my mind to relax and meander through the plethora of thoughts that sojourn in it daily
  • Work on whichever personal projects I feel like
What AI thinks is loneliness Using https://huggingface.co/spaces/stabilityai/stable-diffusion
Lonely in Bangalore Lonely in Smokey Bangalore in Comic Book Style Black and White

However, it is loneliness. And it is lonely being lonely. On a weekend when you are having a beer by yourself, it does hit you. Why ? To what end ? Let’s forget this and go out and party. Let’s not watch this one interview but instead go out for a movie. These questions are tough to answer and even tougher to say no to. But it’s also the no that’s been keeping me extremely productive and satisfied. So it seems like loneliness is making me productive as it gives me the power of complete independence. But, can we not achieve complete independence without the constraint/side effect of loneliness ? Can I not be highly productive along with not being lonely ? Is there a way to do that ? And if that way does exist then what sort of state would I end up in post following that way ? How would that state be different from my current state ? Is loneliness one side of the double-edged sword of high independence ? Or is this just being independent and highly productive something that I am extremely poor at ? These are some questions that I want to find the answer to going ahead. Movies have helped me romanticise loneliness a lot, but once you are post the romance of it, that shit does take a toll.