dreamer_easy | "I am not less perfect than Lore."

My recent psychiatric history has been a succession of professional persons trying to convince me that, in fact, I'm not Doing It Wrong. Being more accepting of my failings and quirks is extraordinarily difficult, but it can make a huge difference to stop trying to swim to shore and just go with the flow of the rip tide.

I'm being deliberately vague here because some of the stuff is very personal, but here's one foible that's the exact opposite: my hermitic tendencies. I rarely socialise these days. That's partly due to my health, both physical (I am unpredictably exhausted) and mental (my social phobia is a long way from beaten). I'm constantly missing out on meetings, picnics, dinners, etc because I'm just not physically capable of crawling out of the house to them. It can get lonely.

But I think it's also partly just my personality. I prefer my own company, and always have, really. Never happier than when I'm reading, or roaming a library, or puttering away on one of my innumerable projects. It's a temperament that suits a writer, of course - but for a long time I've felt like it's something I've got to change, something unhealthy, lazy, selfish and wrong.

It takes a lot of convincing, before your brain suddenly says, yeah, I'm ready to quit worrying about that now. You just have prepare as best you can, and to wait for that magic switch to throw itself. As with the sudden enlightenment described in so many koans, an external, innocuous cue can do it. I think possibly that's what happened this morning as I lay abed, trying to summon the ergs to rise, reading the first short Sherlock Holmes story, A Scandal in Bohemia:

"... while Holmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature."

He loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul!

Well, "loathed" would be an overstatement for me. Probably so is "Bohemian", by which Doyle meant "Holmes is a weirdo". What's more, Sherlock Holmes is not exactly the best role model you could have when it comes to, erm, pretty much anything, really. But just because he prefers his own company doesn't mean he's not working hard, accomplishing worthwhile things, contributing to society, following his bliss. Heck, this is a guy who cocaine makes sleepy.

Perhaps I can effect some similar compromise. In the meantime, there's always the housework about which to beat myself up.