I reckon I've been alone for 10 minutes this entire week," I huffed to a girlfriend recently. I heard a sharp intake of breath before she went quiet. "And that includes bathroom time!"
Welcome to life with small children, where even going to the toilet or having a shower is something you do with an entourage. If I close my eyes I can pretend I'm Mariah Carey. Or not.
The friend listening to me vent is trying to get pregnant and she's not happy with the direction of our conversation. "You know, you're really not selling this motherhood thing very well," she sighs, deeply disturbed by the thought of an audience in her bathroom.
Perhaps she's right. Shower-as-spectator-sport is not one of motherhood's more appealing features. But, gosh balls, I wish one of my 700 pregnancy books had mentioned that children hoover up your solitude. Everyone rants about not sleeping but nobody explains you'll never be alone. And that's a huge adjustment. Babies in particular are unfamiliar with the concept of personal space. They're more like, "Mummy's space is my space. Hell, Mummy's body is mine, too." This is a beautiful thing most of the time, but on occasions I've found myself announcing, "Mummy just needs five minutes when NOBODY IS TOUCHING HER. And that includes Daddy, OKAY?"
But hey, you don't need to be a parent to suffer from a severe deficit of alone time. There's a far bigger solitude sucker than kids and it's called "technology". You may have heard of it.
Along with social media, technology has pretty much obliterated solitude from our lives. It's difficult to be by yourself in 2009, have you noticed?
If Greta Garbo were alive today, I don't think she'd be on Facebook. Or Twitter. The actress who starred in Hollywood's silent-film era and who famously said "I want to be alone" wouldn't have a BlackBerry. And I doubt she'd use those seconds waiting for her soy latte to SMS two friends and return her mother's call.
The only way Greta could be really alone today would be to quarantine herself from the technology of communication. No mobile, no internet, no social media. Because if it's solitude you're after, hiding behind an electrified fence just won't cut it any more. People will seep in via broadband and 3G and steal your solitude while you're watching TV - which is no longer a solitary pursuit thanks to texting and Twitter.
There are many benefits to this, of course. Social isolation is far easier to remedy. But on the downside, technology has gobbled up our downtime. With the creeping expectation that we're all available to communicate 24/7, are we losing the ability to just twiddle our thumbs? Stare into space? Chill?
William Deresiewicz is a literary critic and former professor of English at Yale University, and in a recent essay he lamented the loss of solitude in our lives.
"Technology is taking away our privacy and our concentration but it is also taking away our ability to be alone," he says. "Though I shouldn't say taking away. We are doing this to ourselves; we are discarding these riches as fast as we can."
For me, this is totally true. I may bitch and moan about having no time to myself but when I do have a spare minute, I rush to fill it with communication.
I return calls while I drive (hands-free, natch) and I text at every opportunity - you can achieve many things at a traffic light or while standing in a queue. Much of this multitasking is just effective time management because, like most people, I always have too much to do. But I'm under no illusions.
This efficiency comes at a price and that price is not having the mental space to just ... think.
Our online life and social networks used to exist only when we were near a computer. But now they've been emancipated from our desks and follow us everywhere via text or social media applications on our mobiles. We've anaged to hungrily fill every gap in our lives with communication or the possibility of it.
Some of us (me) have become addicted to being in constant contact. I get antsy if my phone is not within reach, apoplectic if my internet goes down.
The problem with this is that precious things live in those little gaps between interactions. There's gold to be found in the periods of mental silence when we're not communicating. Creativity and insights and great ideas. Even the ka-ching of remembering a crossword answer or the name of that restaurant you've been meaning to try. Those things can't bubble up to the surface until your head is clear and the chatter stops.
Running water is apparently very conducive to creativity and a-ha moments. It's no accident we have our best ideas in the shower. In some research labs, shower banks are installed so scientists can go and think under the water. I presume the shower cubicles have doors? With locks? No audience?
I knew I should have been a scientist.
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