Loving the Reclusive Life

I think that I'm definitely becoming a recluse.  Over the past couple of months I have actively discouraged people from phoning me up to check whether I'm dead or not as they haven't heard from me of late, avoided speaking to neighbours other than to say 'hello', gone out of my way to avoid anyone I might know while I'm out and even stopped testing my best friend.  The only one of these things I feel guilty about is the last, as it is simply the result of laziness, rather than design.  The consequence of all this has been a wonderful period of absolutely minimal direct contact with the rest of humanity.  To be sure, I haven't been totally isolated, I've still been involved in international Zoom calls with friends overseas, but in terms of contact with the people around me, it has been completely minimal.  And I've loved it.  A prolonged break from people has been what I've craved for so long.  I know we had those lockdowns, but they were imposed, this is purely by choice. The reasons for my recent reclusiveness are several fold.  For one thing, I'm naturally a solitary person and I've never really needed people.  For another, after the various traumas I endured in my former job, I really, really need a break from dealing with people, whether that be the people I had to deal with from outside the organisation, or the people I worked with.  Indeed, my experiences with the latter - the constant low-level bullying and passive aggressiveness which contributed to making the workplace utterly poisonous - have left me feeling that I never want to go back into the working environment again.  (Hence the fact that I'm currently in no hurry to find work right now).

Of course, it has really helped that the modern world makes it ever easier to be reclusive.  Indeed, to some extent the pandemic with its social distancing, lockdowns and forded isolations, validated the whole solitary lifestyle.  For a while, my preferred relationship with the world became the norm.  It promoted the rise of online shopping to an unprecedented degree, made remote video conferencing the norm in terms of communication and rendered many workplaces obsolete.  The truth is that nowadays, there is no longer any actual need to have direct contact with anyone.  Which suits me.  Moreover, it has never been easier to keep oneself entertained: thanks to the internet one can always have a connection of sorts with the outside world and access to all manner of media.  Streaming channels, in particular, have proven themselves to be essential.  Even the free-to-air ones which I view exclusively, are chock full of the kind of low rent, obscure and scuzzy content that I love. Back in the day, most of this stuff was simply unavailable via conventional media.  Nowadays, I can watch wall-to-wall exploitation all day long if I so choose.  Of late, I've found a number of Roku streaming apps which bundle together various free-to-air channels, most of which are unavailable via Roku in any other form, (many are usually unavailable in the UK altogether).  As an inveterate channel hopper, I find these apps invaluable: I can spend hours flicking between the various streams in these apps, catching all manner of weird and wonderful stuff.  It's as close to paradise as I've been in a long time.  So, there you are - right now I'm a recluse and loving it.