Christopher Nolan: A Hermit Beardo

The Los Angeles Times reported on Christopher Nolan's mysterious life choices of not owning a cellphone, forgoing an e-mail account, & living in a Malibu trailer park to focus on a new script while growing a "Hollywood hermit's beard."  This new script turned out to be one of the best films of 2010 - written, directed, and produced by this bearded genius who considers  Stanley Kubrick and Ridley Scott as his primary influences.

But this got us thinking of the term "hermit beard" - as defined by the example of Mr. Nolan - the process of complete isolation during the facial hair growing process only to emerge stronger & wiser (and in rare cases, producing a film that causes the world to watch it at least 5 times always debating the final scene and arguing over who is actually being incepted).  

Have any of our readers taken time to disappear from reality & concentrate solely on growing a beard?  Was it hard to seclude yourself from the public eye?  What were the reactions when you finally came back or did your totem just keep spinning?