Anyone else becoming a hermit and liking it? | Jabbering Journo column

This week I am on holiday.
Atmosphere Kanifushi, MaldivesAtmosphere Kanifushi, Maldives
Atmosphere Kanifushi, Maldives

Naturally, the only discernible difference between this week and last week is I am ‘switched off’ from work – instead focused on writing my novel, colour-coding the bookshelves and tracking the movements of my neighbours and the bin men, ‘Rear Window’ style. Actually I did the latter while working so cross that one off.

I am not, and I repeat, not, even slightly bitter about the reality that this week was booked so I could fly off on a dream trip to the Maldives.

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Who needs idyllic, far-flung exotic, azure-sea, sandy adventures when you can lie around and read a book just as easily in your garden? It’s even been sunny so sunblock is not even a fantasy.

I’m perfectly adjusted to the idea – perhaps a little too perfectly.

In fact there’s a definite possibility I may never leave the house again – and be quite glad about it.

Somewhere and somehow this enforced household isolation has brought something in me to the fore that I always knew was there but managed to keep hidden.

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Largely conquered, my definite tendency toward introversion has emerged once more and I feel quite relieved I don’t have to socialise, make polite conversation face to face or waft about in busy places.

This may seem a little strange – seeing how I’m a journalist and a radio presenter, not career moves associated with the shy and retiring.

But as all of us extroverted introverts know – and there is absolutely loads of us out there – it is not the radio chats or the big stage moments that leave us shrinking away but the small business breakfasts, attending a party alone, the enforced chat with a stranger in a supermarket and the ordering of a takeaway on the phone.

Interview a Prime Minister? Fine.

Discuss my phone contract with a lady at a call centre? No thanks.

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So this enforced isolation has poured life-giving strength to my withered away shy girl tendencies and I find I never want to leave the house again.

I am a hermit and I doubt I’m the only one – though I’d make an exception for the idyllic Maldives, obviously.

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