10 ways to spend quality time alone

In today’s overly connected world, finding solitude has become increasingly difficult. We are all bogged down by personal commitments, job pressure, religious commitments, etc; the list is endless. More often than not, you do not have time for the most important person in your life; YOU!

There is nothing wrong with disconnecting and spending some time alone. In fact, research suggests that spending alone time lets you unwind, discover yourself, improves concentration, and increases productivity. So do yourself a favour and spend some time alone. If you have no clue what you can do in your alone time, here are some a quick and easy ideas for you.

2015: What’s your resolution, hobbyists?

So, we are again at the threshold of a new year, a year we hope to make better than the previous one (we’re such optimists, I tell you!). So much so that we will dream up the details in our sleep, if we’re not on a binge the last night of 2014, of things we want to keep, things we want to ‘seriously’ keep and things we just want to get rid of, like that overly curious neighbour who, by the way, has a bad breath. Imagine him at the door on the sweet morning of the first day of the New Year. There goes your will to be nice to people down the drain. Some things are not meant to last, we know. But all the same, the stage is set for all of it.

Of Stargazers and Starry Night

Musing over the star studded space from terrace in the quiet of night even half-curiously may have philosophical implications on your life. You didn’t know?

Stargazing as an activity is not very different from other idle pastimes like Trainspotting and Bird-watching. All three are notable for their apparent uselessness, their no particular learning curve and for not demanding any pre-requisites to begin with, something that from a child to the great-granny can do with equal engagement. The other thing that unites gazers, watchers and spotters is how conveniently, and often naturally, they draw a line between casual curiosity and seriousness of academic flavour. In fact, the element of idle-wondering is the most fulfilling aspect of stargazing and, needless to say, contrary to all the negative claims, it does bring you a lot of interesting trivia.

Into The Void

A commonly cited example of cosmic phenomenon that is rooted in Christian tradition is the sighting of the lodestar by the Magi leading them to believe a momentous occurrence was in the offing. Stargazing in the history of man goes back even earlier and can be traced to the ancient philosopher Plato’s experiments with Astronomy as a discipline circa 300 BC. Little wonder then, that Astronomy ranks among the oldest natural sciences. With the passage of time, astronomy also became linked with astrology as priests from the ancient world were the earliest professional astronomers.

Jump to the 20th century and you have “Scotty, beam us up,” the famous command line from that cult television series of 1960s ‘Star Trek’, which captured the popular imagination of millions the world over. The voyages of the spaceship the ‘Starship Enterprise’ traveling through space fueled the thought process of a global audience that must have wondered about the unknown expanse of eternity beyond the earth’s atmosphere – outer space.