Solitude

Originally posted: Wednesday, December 31, 2003

I am at my mom's where life is at an even slower pace than it is in San Antonio. My life is hectic in Los Angeles. I love taking a breather and slowing the pace down. It's kind of funny because most people think of California as a laid back kind of place. I don't know if it's my lifestyle, or most people in Los Angeles, but my life is anything but laid back. I visited our San Francisco showroom a couple of months ago and commented on the pace there being much more relaxed. The managers laughed because they felt that things in Los Angeles were much more uptight and faster paced. Now, I have the solitude to write as I see fit.

I found everyone's comments on that entry very interesting. It seemed each person had his or her own definition of Solitude. I decided to see what MS would equate Solitude with. It gave me: Loneliness, Privacy, Isolation, and Seclusion. These words don't all have the same connotation to me, which enlightened me as to why each commenter read something different into my entry.

For me Solitude could never mean loneliness or isolation. Even at my worst, I always seek people out to be around me. But, every now and then I do like going off by myself without the constant stimulation of people to entertain. However, I can find Solitude in a crowd, so long as it's a crowd of people that I do not know. When it's not, then I have this innate sense of responsibility to give and entertain. Solitude could never mean silence either. I am the type who must always have noise around me. I either have music or the TV on at all times when I am home or in the car, even when I sleep, read, or study for school.

Solitude to me is privacy, uninterrupted privacy. It's a place I can go to be alone with my thoughts. I crave it sometimes. Sometimes when life is hectic, I just feel absolutely overstimulated by all the action around me and I like to take back control and be alone to think, or maybe to think of nothing at all. To just be. That is solitude to me.