Personal Essay #5: The Joys of being Alone

Do you like being alone?

As a kid, I never really liked to hang out with other people. When given the option to hang out with my classmates or sit by myself, I had almost always chosen to stay by myself. And while it would be entertaining if I had a specific reason as to why I didn’t want to hang out with other people, I honestly just didn’t want to. At the time, my imagination was more than enough to entertain me at any given moment, so, I would always prefer to be stuck in my own head over anything else. I liked being able to just sit in silence and let myself retreat into my own body instead of trying to talk to another person, and I found nothing wrong with that. 

And, looking back on how I acted as a child, I still don’t find anything majorly wrong with my want to be alone. After all, I would still play with the other kids at recess, talk during group discussions, and try to interact with the other kids when I could. But the more I think about it, I’m able to look back and notice how some issues I struggle with now stem from my wanting to be alone as a kid. For example, I tend to struggle holding proper conversations with people because I’m so used to defaulting on being by myself. My lack of interaction in my more formative years has led me to struggle with it now. Alongside this, it has also affected the relationships I have with the people around me, especially my little sister. 

If I had to describe my little sister in extremely simplistic terms, I would describe her as the opposite of me. Where I find comfort in myself, she finds it being surrounded by other people. Where I need breaks in between interacting with people, she’s able to jump from person to person without an issue. She’s the one inviting her friends to huge sleepover parties and days out while I prefer hushed conversations over the phone and quiet movie nights. And while my sister and I did have many similarities between us growing up, it was these base differences between us that put a subtle strain on our relationship. 

Despite how we interacted in our childhood, I feel like the contrast between my sister’s and I’s personalities only hit me recently. It was a warm spring Friday, and my sister and I were finally able to step back into the house after a long day of school. As we both kicked our shoes off at the front door and started to head upstairs, from an open window, I could hear the neighborhood kids riding on their bikes in the street. Upon hearing the commotion, my little sister sprinted up the stairs, threw her backpack on her bed, and flew down the stairs towards the garage, where her bike was sitting. And before I could even settle down into my bed, from my bedroom window, I could see my sister riding down the street with the neighborhood kids. 

It was at that moment that the differences between my sister and I really hit me. I watched her ride into the distance and couldn’t help but ask myself: am I lonely? before quickly bursting into giggles at the thought. Upon further reflection I came to the realization that I am not lonely, I just prefer being alone. Where my sister loves to be surrounded by people all the time I prefer to only be around people occasionally. And as I snuggled into bed under the warm rays of the sun with the sound of the neighborhood kids circling back to our front yard, a smile graced my lips, at the realization that both my sister and I were enjoying the start of our weekends, in whichever way we prefer.

Personal Essay #4: A Bittersweet Letter to My Love

 To what piece of technology would you write a “love letter”?

Technology has advanced quickly, and the faster it evolves, the more we fall in love with it. It started as a relatively healthy relationship, one where both sides had to commit and sacrifice parts of themselves for the other, us sacrificing our time, energy and money and the machine, its battery life and struggle to boot up. But the deeper into the relationship we got, the more we sacrificed and the more dependent we become on our machines. This reliance has gotten so bad that I would even dare to call it codependence. The longer we live with technology, especially portable technology, the more we give to it, and the more it takes from us. One such thing being taken from us would be our independence, and I can’t help but notice this in the relationship I have with my phone.

It started off small, my reliance on my phone, back when I didn’t have as much to worry about and as much responsibility. But knowing it was there was already affecting me. Growing up with the world at my fingertips, knowing that I could just look up whatever I wanted to, and not having to struggle to find entertainment or direction affected my thought process.

I feel like my dependence is most affected in relation to how I drive, or more specifically, how I get directions. I have lived in Champaign-Urbana my whole life, but knowing the general direction of locations and being able to come up with a route to drive there is a completely different story. So, I have found myself defaulting to looking up or just plugging in directions to wherever I want to go. This dependence is fine in theory but can have massive drawbacks in certain scenarios. One such instance would be knowing street names. Because of my dependence on google maps I have found myself very lacking when it comes to knowing streets in relation to each other. After all, I could just follow the arrow and the highlighted streets instead of being on the lookout for signage and directional indicators. And this directional dependence has its own drawbacks. I am more likely to trust my phone over myself, and that is just not the best way to go about life.

So, following the notion that my relationship with my phone is one of love, if I were to write a letter to it, it would mention some of the following: I would mention my thankfulness to be able to communicate and connect myself with people or things I would’ve never known existed otherwise. I would show my appreciation of it being able to entertain and inspire me to try new things or become more educated on the things I am interested in. I would thank it for being a constant in my life, whenever I’m in an embarrassing situation or trying to divert my attention to something else, it is always there to be my scapegoat and explanation.

However, just because I have so much to positively say about it, doesn’t mean that I am completely blinded to its cons as well. So, I would criticize it for its ease, because I have an easy way out, I don’t have to struggle as much as I would like to, so I’m unprepared if I don’t have my phone with me. It also prevents me from getting bored, which might sound nice now but will have negative consequences later. If I’m unable to feel bored, then I won't be able to figure out how to entertain myself without my phone. So, while I truly love my phone and all it does for me, it almost does too much for me to the point I get negative drawbacks. 

And so, because of all of this, I think it would be better if we took things a little slower, I need some more time for myself. But I hope we can stay friends.