I woke up at noon. I haven't done shit to prepare for teaching. There's a big block party barbecue that I had planned on attending at 6 this evening. I have to get some work done before then. I'm in a terrible black mood.

I'm a bit hungover. This always makes me depressed.

Getting to this hungover point, though, was great fun--Bathsheba and her Peter came over to see Basho and we went out to eat and to drink and to play pool. It's been awhile. I was slightly less horrible at pool than I've been in the past. I even got some balls in all by myself. Yippee me. We went to this bizarre restaurant/bar place across from the pool hall for drinks. It's called Group Therapy. Yes it is. The music they were pumping? I don't even know what that was. Peter was in agonies. He said we were surrounded by republicans. He promised me my pick of mountain men if I come to Colorado. He was thoroughly charming. And extraverted. As was Bathsheba, but she always is. The Colorado movement is fast gaining ground.

I am not extraverted. Uh, right. No kidding. I am a textbook study in introversion. I do not like meeting new people. This is why my little circle of comrades is so very small. I know I piss and moan about this ad nauseam here, but I have rather deliberately set my life up this way and for the most part, it suits me. I do get lonely, sometimes unbearably so, but mostly, loneliness has its own rich texture and solitude is so often my only solace in life. I have always been this way, since I was a kid getting notes sent home to my parents from concerned teachers about my lack of interest in socializing. Luckily, my parents were right on and knew that I was my own person with my own sensibility and let me be.

My extreme shyness is only one component working here. Yeah, I don't like people to notice me, I don't like to be anywhere near the center of attention, I hate crowds, I'm uncomfortable around strangers. Yes, yes, that's all true and that's always been true. But it's also true that I do not long to be different. I do not want to fit in. This too, has always been true. I never wanted to be part of the crowd. I have spent my entire life shunning the crowd, turning away from the mass of people trying to get me to come in, to be a part of them. My mom has always told me, since I was a wee lass, that I am the hermit down the road who feeds the well of the townspeople. I like this about myself. I don't despise people. That's not what this is about at all. I care about people. I don't like to see anyone being hurt or made fun of or trying to get people to like them and not succeeding. I find so much pain in everyone and so little empathy, so little kindness. Solitude provides peace. Real friendship, with trust and love, provides peace. Phoniness, mindless chatter to fill up the emptiness, dishonesty, cruelty, superiority, a sense of entitlement--those things I despise, those things in other people make me unbearably sad. And so my circle stays small.

I'm sleepy and have much work before me. Wish me luck.