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Living Alone

By Sarah Stodola

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I am finding that living alone is both good and bad for my priorities, which at this point in time are grad school, work, writing, and this site; not necessarily in that order. It's good because when I sit down to study or write, there is no danger of a roommate walking through the door and sucking you into a conversation or a television show or a beer. It's bad because when your social life no longer comes to you, you have to go to it, at least every so often, or you risk losing a little bit of your sanity from the solitude.

It used to be that I would shut myself in my bedroom with the intention of remaining locked in for hours. I'd usually make it an hour, two at most, before the noises from the living room proved too appealing to resist. There's nothing quite so irresistible as putting off important, time-sensitive work with meaningless banter and mind-numbing primetime television.

My first year of grad school I wasn't working, so I woke up in the morning, put on a pot of coffee, and then sat down in my room to study. Unfortunately, this was during the worst economic downturn of my adult life, so naturally, I had an unemployed roommate. I'd eventually go the kitchen/living room to refill my cup of coffee, and he would inevitably be sitting there watching Blind Date, or some such daytime nonsense. And it turns out that the only thing harder to resist in the face of daunting amounts of Hegel and Freud than primetime television is the daytime trash. Blind Date is so bad it's good, especially to the jobless and the student. Same with The View, and Good Day New York. These are shows that I would never in a million homebound mornings watch unless I had some pressing deadline to avoid, I swear.

Not that I have become immune to television now that I live alone. I still come home from work and watch a rerun or two before returning to anything productive. But at least now, when I decide that enough is enough with the bad television, I can turn it off, instead of trying in vain to ignore it while the roommates continue watching.

Living alone also becomes a problem when, like me, you have a social streak. Sitting alone for days on end with no social contact, which is necessary during the last couple months of a semester, is really, really, difficult for me. Couple that with the fact that immediately after moving into my own apartment, I became single again, so I don’t even have the occasional visit from a boyfriend to alleviate my solitude, and it becomes inevitable that every couple of days or so I abandon the lonely work for a more social environment.

Of course, living alone is for the most part a great thing, and I am convinced that as someone who is now looking at her late twenties, the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages.

For starters, I can now buy a bottle of wine or a six-pack of beer or even a whole big bottle of decent vodka, and it’ll still be there when I decide that I want to drink it, even if that time comes a month or two after the date I buy it. That might not seem like a big deal to some people, but I don’t really have all that much money, so a bottle of vodka puts a noticeable dent in my weekly budget. I’m also the kind of person who, when I want a drink, I really want a drink. And it’s a really tough moment when you believe that you are just seconds away from that much-needed drink, only to pull open the fridge and realize that, no, you are going to have to venture back out into the night if you want that beer.

So while I’m speaking of vices and such…I’m not saying that I’d ever bring a guy home with me at night, but if I were to do so, I imagine that it would be a much simpler process for one who lives alone. And since my parents read most of what I write, I’ll leave it at that.

Just for the possession of nice things in general, living alone is heaven. Since moving into my own place, I have purchased (or had purchased for me by my aforementioned parents, who are very nice) the following: sofa, curtains, wine glasses, martini glasses, martini shaker, bookshelf, bathroom rugs, shower curtain, lampshade, power drill (I told Dad I’d brag), and multiple kitchen accessories; all of which are very nice, and by my standards pricey.

In my last shared apartment, the couch came from the curb down the street, there were no curtains, we went through about 4 sets of cheap IKEA wine glasses, the bathroom rug cost $4 at Target, the lampshade that I later replaced also came from the curb, etcetera etcetera. This wasn’t necessarily because we were all broke, which we were, but also because roommate situations are just generally less permanent, and therefore less is expected. It’s a fact of human nature that you take care of your own things better than you take care of others’, not because you are a bad person, but because that's just the way it is.

This isn’t meant to say anything about my previous roommates. I can say in all honesty that the last roommates I had before living alone were the best roommates a person could hope for. But it doesn’t matter how great your roommates are, things are still different, and in so many ways better, when you live alone.

Like, for instance, I was able to concentrate long enough to get this little essay finished on time. Quite a feat, even in the solitude of my very own apartment.

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Sarah Stodola is the Managing Editor of Me Three.  She can be contacted at sstodola@methree.net.

© 2003 Me Three