How to be alone? It's a question of existence—one that drove a Los Angeles-based filmmaker, Sindha Agha, to translate her journal entries and cellphone video logs created during quarantine into a six-minute documentary of the same name. "In a delicious act of self-flagellation, I meticulously documented my failure to thrive in solitude," she wrote in a piece for the New York Times. In the film, Agha takes us through her routine, one that sees her wake up at different times, on different days, and do different things—exercise, write [like Maya Angelou in the morning], meditate, get some sun or text her ex-boyfriend, or sometimes just stare at a humming bird, hanging on the telephone wire outside her window. "I wish I was better at being alone," she shares in the documentary.

Agha found hope in polar psychology—a study of "Antarctic dwellers and how ICE (isolated, confined and extreme) conditions impact them psychologically". Obsessively collecting facts on the experience of those living in cold climes for the film, helped her find solace through the lockdown. "When quarantine is over, I will be a different person," she says, having seen the beauty of a life lived within the confines of her walls.