I used to think I needed quiet to focus. Turns out I need it in order to fully exist.
Not performatively—just… to hear myself think, without interruption. To follow a thought from start to finish without explaining it to someone else along the way. To write something without wondering how it sounded aloud. To be in a room where no one else’s energy tugged at mine, even gently.
To be in a space that is wholly my own
That’s the thing. It’s not always noise that interrupts you. Sometimes it’s kindness. Concern. Chatter. Presence. Intent.
Even love.
But presence is pressure, sometimes.
And silence became the first time I noticed how rare my own, fully formed and cogent thoughts really were.
I didn’t find my voice in a conversation.
I found it when the room stayed quiet long enough for the echoes to die out.
When I could sit in a space that didn’t demand anything from me. Not attention, not engagement, not compromise.
It didn’t happen all at once. It crept in.
The first time I spent a full weekend alone and didn’t feel “wrong.”
The first time I laughed out loud at something, just for me.
The first time I caught myself talking—not with sounds, not to anyone, just with myself. Letting my thoughts make themselves known to me, turning them over in my mind with no real goal or intent. Letting them rub together, and become something new, something different.
That’s when I started building things.
Not from performance. Not to impress.
Just because I finally had the mental real estate to think clearly enough to make something.
That’s where Thriving Solo came from.
Not out of isolation, but from uninterrupted becoming.
From finally getting far enough away from the noise to recognise what was mine, and what was inherited.
It’s not about being better alone. It’s about being realer in the quiet.
If you’re curious, I write more about this way of living here: