I am surprisingly good company

At first, I was scared people would think I was a freak, but I ended up going to movies alone, comedy shows, parks, bars and treated myself to nice restaurants.

Joint winner of Young Journalist of the Year, Chloe Lyons from Sunshine Coast Daily at the News Awards 2018, held at the Hyatt Regency, Sydney. Picture: Jonathan Ng

IT'S nice to be back on the Sunshine Coast.

For the past four months I have been in Europe.

Three of those months were spent working remotely as a European correspondent before I took a month off to travel.

It was a prize for being a joint winner of News Corp's young journalist of the year.

It was an amazing experience where I got the opportunity to cover everything from the Notre Dame fire, Julian Assange's arrest, the London Bridge terror attack inquest, charges filed in relation to the MH17 crash and all things Royal baby.

It was a bit of a baptism of fire living alone for the first time in a new city on the other side of the world, but I learnt a surprising amount being by myself most of the day.

I learnt my threshold for boredom is a lot higher than I thought, that talking to yourself is perfectly acceptable (but maybe not in the supermarket) and bumps in the night seem a lot louder when you have to check them yourself.

I'm not usually someone who spends time alone.

As I was preparing to move to London, I realised aside from going food shopping I very rarely did anything in public by myself.

But once I got there, I was forced to venture out solo.

At first, I was scared people would think I was a freak, but I ended up going to movies alone, comedy shows, parks, bars and even treated myself to nice restaurants.

Although cooking for one will always be depressing.

For all I know people did think I was a freak, but I surprisingly make better company than I thought.

Even though I'm back near my friends and family, I think I still might sneak off to the movies on my own.

Originally published as I am surprisingly good company