Living Like a Hermit

I am quite a social person by nature. But the past few years – especially the months of 2013 – have seen a shift in my usual get-out-there-and-do-stuff personality. I am retired from the corporate world and I currently have no other job than to stay home and be a wife for the first time in decades. This makes me happy.

Now I am a writer. And that can be a pretty solitary life. So much so that I am often hesitant to leave the house. Which is just weird.

This past weekend was a busy one and it kind of threw me off because I wasn’t home for much of it. My mother took us out for a lovely dinner on Friday night – at a fancy restaurant that had cloth napkins, glasses with stems, and a meal presented like the Food Network shows. It was wonderful! But it had been a long, long time since we’d done anything like that. On Saturday, we helped our daughter move out of our house and into her own place. She made us a great dinner there and we had a good time. Yesterday, we went to church and later to a bridal shower for my niece who is getting married in June. By the time I got home at 8:00, I was exhausted.  All because I’m not accustomed to that kind of a busy schedule anymore.

I’ve become a hermit.

The realization struck me this morning and I don’t like it.

To be sure, there are advantages to living like a hermit. You are protected in your little house and you feel safe. You don’t have to deal with a lot of trivial conversation or be subjected to trials of the workforce or practice your social skills. Those are positives, to some degree.

But if you continue in your hermity ways, you miss so much life. That’s my takeaway from this past weekend.

I can still be a writer and closet myself away during those specific writing times. But for the rest, there is a whole world out there that I need to re-enter and embrace.

See you there!