My life choices that I don’t fully regret are: 1) I didn’t rush into relationships, 2) I don’t have many luxuries, and 3) I’m comfortable with being on my own. Many may see this 39-year-old man as a sad case of loserdom, and I don’t fully deny that. I’m fortunate these days for having few problems to stress about, remaining physically healthy, and steadily improving my mental health. While it’s not a life most would want or care for, it affords me the focus on what I value, which is all the reward I need. Very few loners are as lucky.
I’m talking about this because it seems to me that most sacrifice their own personal peace in exchange for moments of joy and pleasure atop mountains of stress and frustration. I don’t knock them for making those choices, but I’ve seen enough individuals who behave badly as a result of either what they had to put on their plate to support those choices or directly from those choices. I believe they haven’t had enough time to figure themselves out, sort out their traumas, and amply prepare themselves for those responsibilities.
That may sound judgmental, but it’s mostly from observation, direct testimony, and having to help and even live with such people that I make that assessment.
This blog post is not to denigrate those life choices, but to offer consolation and confirmation to those who went the same way as I did and somehow regret how their lonely lives turned out. I know well how it feels to be on the road less traveled. That crooked, lonesome road is paved with regrets, lined with depression, and strewn full of signs pointing back to trauma. Everything in front looks bleak, and everything gone past is broken. It’s easy to think of that place in life as fate that can never be changed or escaped from.
Let’s not wallow in sorrow brought on by that solitude, but find hope in our isolation through meditation and introspection. Be honest with ourselves, shed comforting delusions, recognize the good we still have, and learn what we still lack. Once we have a better handle of ourselves, perhaps we can eventually step out and start being a bit less lonely.
Being Comfortably Alone is Both a Strength and a Weakness
Loneliness is a warm blanket, addicting and quietly dangerous. When you’re too comfortable with being alone, the company of others — no matter how loving and trustworthy they are — feels like an itchy blanket you desperately need to take off as quickly as possible.
This is my current predicament as past trauma and present circumstance blend into a heady mix of cynicism and malaise. The cynicism comes with the lack of trust in people, always suspicious of their ulterior motives. The malaise comes with the lack of effort in making friends, joining groups, and forming relationships. It’s easier to return home and sink back into digital escapism. That’s what makes it dangerous — the habit of being alone is hard to break.
However, you also have a strength very few have, which is not fearing loneliness. No one can emotionally blackmail you into staying in a toxic relationship. You can more easily let go when things are not working out. You may be able to get over breakups more easily if you remember that people don’t tend to show their true selves in front of others. Of course, that should be without addressing one’s flaws, but there’s a caveat to that as well.
It’s difficult to find people you can show your true face to. However, if you’ve never taken off your mask in front of others before, how do you know if your true self is actually worth fighting for? How do you learn how it feels to be betrayed? To be looked down upon? To be ridiculed for being who you are? It’s trauma if it’s both undeserved and unaddressed.
The biggest mistake most loners make is continuing to hide from that trauma — the painful lesson of being shunned for being who you truly are. On one hand, if they reject you because you cause harm, then you’ll have to examine and verify if they’re right in you being wrong. On the other hand, if there’s no justification for it other than them being wrong, then you have to learn to somehow withstand that criticism.
When you’re unable to get past that trauma, you’re unable to get out of your comfort zone — that warm blanket — to proceed to what could be the next stage of your life. You may even self-sabotage, ruining relationships and forgoing opportunities to remain in your safe space, only to languish and rot. That’s the plot of the movie Good Will Hunting — life wasted on fear of vulnerability.
You can keep that warm blanket wrapped around you while continuing to stay in a cold and dark wasteland, or you can get up and move to where the sun shines. Solitude should be a rest, not an eternal refuge.
The Art of Solitude
Eremitism is the art of living alone. It’s not the same as loneliness. The deliberate choice of physical isolation, especially in this day and age, is not necessarily choosing to be socially isolated as well. It’s more about taking control of one’s social energy and making the conscious decision to avoid noise and drama to regulate one’s emotions and maintain social hygiene. Some choose to disappear without a trace, while others just need to have regular breaks.
The French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal once said, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
However, it’s important to note that eremitism in its pure form is meant to be a deliberate choice, not an unfortunate circumstance. Hermits, ascetics, nomads, and so on become who they are because they wish to seclude themselves from society for a variety of reasons. Whether it’s to focus on one’s spiritual journey, escape from social drama and noise, concentrate on their life’s work, or so on, it’s done to avoid distractions and streamline existence.
Different Forms of Eremitism
There’s temporary eremitism, prolonged eremitism, and permanent eremitism. Taking a social break for a few weeks or months does not make you a hermit; that’s just a break. What makes you a real hermit is dropping off the social radar for long enough that it becomes a significant enough sacrifice of one’s social life, missing out on others’ major life events and abstaining from pretty much all forms of relationships.
Temporary eremitism is a deliberate cutting off of oneself from the world for a specified period of time, usually for accomplishing an objective. Writers and artists tend to engage in this to finish their major works, usually by locking oneself in a room or staying in a hotel until they’re done. Upon completion of whatever they’re working on, they tend to come out to show the world what they’ve made, although some may enjoy solitude enough to prolong their self-imposed isolation.
Prolonged eremitism can go on for years, and it can either improve or deteriorate one’s life, depending on what they do or don’t do during that time. If spent on self-improvement and self-introspection, it can yield good results and help the individual become more serene and self-aware. However, when spent in indolence, all they really do is get older without going anywhere. It should make you be more at peace and hate yourself and the world less.
This isn’t a productivity hack. It’s not what alpha male influencers would lead you to believe, but doing nothing the whole time can make you worse. You have to do something that makes you a more well-rounded and more loving human being. If you ever decide to come back to the social world, do so as a better person who can help others, and perhaps people will do the same for you without expecting it.
The ultimate goal is to become someone who can pay it forward.
A good example of this is Dick Proenneke, an American self-taught naturalist, conservationist, writer, and wildlife photographer. At the age of 51, he would live alone in the mountains of Alaska in a log cabin near Twin Lakes that he built with his own hands. From 1968 until 1998, he lived off the land and documented his activities in journals and on film, along with meteorological and natural data of the area.
He returned to civilization when he was too old to withstand the cold Alaskan winters, bequeathing his cabin to the National Park Service. The building of the log cabin is documented in the film Alone in the Wilderness.
Permanent eremitism is completely cutting oneself off the rest of the world, becoming a true hermit in every sense of the word. This may be done for various reasons, whether one is tired of the noisy and materialistic world, escaping years of trauma, simply being more comfortable in complete privacy, or so on.
Things to consider are how you’ll be able to survive in such conditions include your mental health, your stress tolerance, and an honest assessment of your basic necessities. Looking sane as a hermit is subjective to the observer; staying sane is still being able to recognize yourself even after years of little to no social contact.
Of course, living alone doesn’t necessarily mean you never talk to anyone again. You should still be able to go back to town for supplies and friendly chats with the locals. It’s just that at the end of the day, you choose to go back home somewhere far away that’s quiet and calm.
The Legend of Five Rings
Perhaps the most famous hermit I know of is Musashi Miyamoto, the ronin who defeated 62 opponents in duels to the death at the end of the Sengoku Jidai. He hung up his sword at the age of 30, picked up the brush, and served the Tokugawa shogunate. He adopted a son and took on students throughout the years, who would carry on his legacy.
Near the end of his life, he retired to a cave to live as a hermit and wrote two books — Go Rin no Sho (The Book of Five Rings) and Dokkodo (The Path of Aloneness). They contain the culmination of his wisdom, which is still read about to this day.
He also left behind his sword style, Niten Ichi-ryu, his way of fighting with two swords as one. He is the most famous of Japan’s kensei — sword saint, a title only bestowed upon the greatest swordsmen through history.
I’ll write about Dokkodo in the near future.
I mention Musashi here as an example of someone who chose to live alone after having lived a pretty full life. Whatever reason there may be to retreat from society, whether it’s to not be a burden to others or simply to focus on finishing what one wishes to leave behind before passing away, is something that perhaps becomes clearer when they live long enough.
Maybe he’s also not that good of an example since his permanent eremitism wasn’t exactly that long. He was only a hermit for around two years, but it’s one of the things he’s best remembered for. It wasn’t like he neither saw the light of the sun nor spoke to another person again — he bequeathed his final manuscript and worldly possessions to the younger brother of his closest disciple two weeks before his death.
However short his eremitism was, it was also fruitful. We speak of him to this day because of how he chose to pass down what he had learned and experienced. Of course, we are not merely the sum of our contributions. What he shared wasn’t just sword technique and strategy, but also a way of life guided by an unending pursuit of learning and the courage to test one’s strength even at great risk.
Cyberasceticism
This is an old idea I had in my younger days, and it seems like there have been other people who had similar thoughts. It was a lot more attractive back in the day, but ‘eat, pray, love’ sort of people had to discover it and take it as their own by blending hustle culture with it to turn this idea into the ‘digital nomad in Bali’ stereotype we have now.
I’ve long held the idea of a cyberascetic — a 21st century ‘monk’ of sorts who uses technology in a disciplined manner to pursue learning and enlightenment. While everyone else is beholden to social media and copious amounts of garbage input, I’ve always seen the Internet as an occult library — a repository of knowledge which allows me to learn just about anything while also containing grimoires full of black magic and portals into dimensions of hell.
I’ve held this view of the Internet since the 2000s as a teenager who was just about to discover his passions and interests. I’ve been staring into this abyss for decades now. I’d hold one eye open while resting the other, alternating between them as the abyss stared back at me, daring me to blink. Social media is an abyss that stares back at countless people, turning them into beasts beyond their own recognition. I knew that stare well since the days of message boards.
This isn’t just putting your phone down for a day or two to touch grass. It’s being in the midst of technology and still staying away from the myriad of temptations and crowded online places — porn, social media, and other distribution feeds of online slop. It’s less about not being corrupted as it is more about having more fruitful things to engage with. For me, it’s writing and learning. For you, it may be painting, music, sewing, programming, business, or so on.
However, it’s not just about using the Internet as a free university of sorts. It seems disingenuous to claim you only use it for such a purpose. It’s as social as it is isolating, and it’s often both at once.
Why This Blog Exists
The website that would become this online repository — Avoider.net — is a major part of my cyberasceticism. I write down my thoughts in an organized format, then publish them here even without the prospect of wide readership simply so I don’t have to verbalize them and make a social mess whenever I’m out and about.
I offload my opinions and gripes about the world into this tiny online outlet so I need not ramble about them to friends, colleagues, and strangers. That was what I used to do all the time when I was younger and more insufferable, which caused much consternation, embarrassment, and gradual ostracism. This is my main form of social hygiene.
Writing on this blog has helped me mature over the years, I believe. I get to read back old posts and see how far I’ve come, both in my writing and my worldview.
At first, while this was still known as Avoiderdragon.com, this blog was just about video games and other media, posting my half-hearted attempts at being a games journalist. I used to write for a local gaming magazine and a gaming website, so I already had some headway. Some of the web design of this blog was taken from that gaming website, which folded in 2015 due to a trademark dispute with a better-known website.
I had a pretty good crack at it, but I wasn’t really that good. Writing about video games felt more like a chore, as if I’m trying to impress people with the depth and esotericism of my opinions rather than simply expressing what I like and don’t like about games. Over time, I became more interested in writing about other things like martial arts and history.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, I got more into philosophy and politics, not merely to rush into a solution but to understand the problem. I knew even before that these things are way bigger than I am, so I’d rather know the intricacies of the dilemma instead of just spouting bullshit opinions on how to solve it like everyone else just to look smart.
You can see in my more recent posts this shift in focus.
This blog is less about getting people to read about what I think and believe and more on shaping and consolidating what I’m trying to become. It’s not supposed to be crystallized, especially when you’re still young. If you believe you’re right with little to no life experience, you’re bound to be proven wrong the hard way.
Show me unmoving conviction and I’ll show you a rigid unwillingness to change and grow. The only time it truly becomes indelible is when you finally die, where your story ends and all your deeds are set in stone. Whoever you helped or hurt will carry on your memory and legacy.
Dying Alone
Those who are alone not by choice, but by unavoidable circumstance, are not engaged in deliberate eremitism — they suffer in purgatory. There are piles of reasons stacked on top of each other that lead one to end up alone with no support. I myself am headed to such an end-life situation — still being single at 39, having to stay with my domineering mother in her twilight years, and your family and relatives expecting you to stick with that commitment.
Many would say it’s as simple as having that difficult conversation about moving out so I can better live my life (especially since I have no money problems). However, when the intended purpose of your existence is to make sure your parents don’t die alone, it gets complicated.
There are now more and more cases of solitary deaths, usually senior citizens who either had children leave them behind or never had children in the first place. It’s especially common in developed countries where cost of living is high, so people have to work extra hard in order to not only survive but also have comfortable enough lives, even to the detriment of their families and personal lives.
In Japan, it’s called kodokushi — death no one notices. There were over 200,000 solitary deaths recorded in 2024 throughout Japan, with 58,000 of them (76%) at the age of 65 years or older. Cleaning up the aftermaths of such deaths is a profession onto itself.
But even in developing countries, it’s also becoming more prevalent as buying power of money continues to dwindle, viable jobs become more scarce, and pressures on breadwinners get more unbearable. More and more people are choosing to forego having children — a lot of my friends and acquaintances are either staying single or in ‘double income, no kids’ (DINK) arrangements.
The more simple the problem seems, the more complicated it actually is beneath the surface.
Add trauma on top of that and you have a toxic mix that ferments as years go by. Time does not heal all wounds; infected wounds only get worse. It’s one thing to choose detachment, it’s another thing to be doomed to being alone, and not everyone has it in them to force themselves out of it with willpower alone. Fire needs fuel, and most people don’t have enough.
Examples of Solitary Deaths
One famous case of solitary death is that of Joyce Carol Vincent, a British woman living in north London whose body was only discovered in January 2006, more than two years after her demise around December 2003, in front of her still-on television, surrounded by wrapped Christmas gifts. Her bills were left unpaid and the smell of decomposition blended with the rest of the neighborhood, which somehow explains why no one checked on her.
Her life is detailed in the 2011 dramatized documentary Dreams of a Life. She had lived an interesting life prior to her self-exile. She had been to many places and mingled with big names prior to quitting her job in 2001 and moving to a solo living arrangement meant for victims of domestic abuse. She cut off contact from family and friends. Whatever caused her to isolate herself from society must have been quite serious.
A solitary death I got to observe through social media was that of Benedict Exconde, a right-wing social media influencer who passed away in October 2021 alone in his apartment from COVID-19 complications during the pandemic lockdowns. His last posts were photos of the pulse oximeter on his finger reading low 90s and pleas for an oxygen tank left unanswered.
His father died of the same illness a month prior, his closest relatives were nowhere nearby, and hospitals were too full, too far away, and too expensive. He wouldn’t have been able to walk more than a few steps without gasping for air. He had spent the productive part of his life defending tyrants online and posing as a Singapore resident, despite actually living in a not-so-stellar part of Makati.
He previously refused western-made vaccines, opting for the Chinese one because it was endorsed by the administration he championed. His last moments were broadcast on Facebook Live, putting on his underwear just as he expired. He was a staunch detractor against social welfare and universal healthcare until the end. His many detractors would make note of this.
In the same year, there was another lonely death that shook me to the core. A high school classmate of mine lived by himself, incapacitated by his deteriorating health. His parents had long been deceased and his next of kin was a distant relative who barely knew him. He was unmarried, destitute, and suffering from diabetes and kidney failure.
He was found in his home by classmates, who pooled money together for medical assistance in a care facility. While he would pass away there months later as his body finally failed him, perhaps it was a comfort for the former class clown to still be beloved enough to be helped in his hour of dire need, almost two decades after we all graduated from high school.
Witnessing that got me thinking about my own life and where I currently stand in this universe. I was a bit of a pariah in high school, so I likely wouldn’t invite a similar level of sympathy. If I were to end up living alone in my later years, I may end up being even more helpless. I don’t really fear what’s ahead of me, but I do regret what I left behind. All I can do is live with the lessons from my misspent youth.
Whether it was my neurodivergence or my selfishness that had me treating people with disdain, it doesn’t change how I came off as unpleasant back then. I’ve since mellowed and smoothed out my rough edges, yet there’s still shame and sorrow over my past lack of courtesy.
If You Do Need Help, Reach Out and Get It
The myth of the ‘lone wolf’ is pervasive, attracting mostly the young and impressionable to divorce themselves from society, mostly due to fear of expectation and betrayal. Much like how real wolves do best in packs, humans do best in tribes. Those who choose to not be a part of a greater whole do so at their own risk, exchanging one form of security for another.
However, the idyllic, off-the-grid homestead that modern urbanites picture in their heads is a lifestyle only made convenient with technological and monetary access. Billionaires are digging bunkers and buying private islands while the world is nearing a probable apocalypse, making it the worst possible time for ordinary people to become hermits. Doomsday prepping may not be that stupid after all, but your 20-year supply of canned goods alone won’t save you.
You don’t need eremitism. It may be choice you make to retreat from drama and insanity so you can find peace of mind, but it shouldn’t turn you into a social pariah. Be quiet while you can be, but actually have something substantial to say whenever you do need to speak. That’s what I believe about the art of being alone — it’s social minimalism, not stagnation.
The more dense the social density, the lonelier people seem to get. It’s a common thing in cities, where the urban environment where people are bunched up together become less sociable with each other. This phenomenon was replicated in the infamous Mouse Utopia experiments, where mice were put in an environment with inadequate space, which resulted in disturbingly unnatural behavior and the eventual extinction of the mice.
As humans, we can choose to not go down the same path.
If your life is a mess, one of the worst things you can do is to permanently retreat from society. It may seem like the right thing to do at the moment because you don’t want to both cause and incur more damage, but it’s only going to lead your mind to spiral down the abyss of depression and lingering regret. You may need more help, not less.
It’s better to be more selective with who you interact with, not just when the chips are down, but also throughout your whole life. However, in our daily dealings, we don’t always get to choose who we interact with and some may be more unpleasant than others. We can consult the very first paragraph of the second book of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, which states:
“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly.
They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own — not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine.
And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower.
To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are unnatural.”
Perhaps getting familiar with that is much better than just detaching yourself from the world.
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