An archetypist

I’m worn out from a lifetime of battling my own innate nature. I keep trying to make my introverted self fit into an extroverted world, but all it does it make me miserable.

The immutable bottom line is that I am strange and eccentric and it is bred into the bone. I don’t like talking on the phone, going to clubs or bars, engaging in small talk or any of the things that normal, sociable people do. Even attention from males I don’t know too well makes me uncomfortable.

What I do like to do is arm myself with my moleskine and a digital camera and go to this place in the woods where the Detroit-Chicago railway line runs over the Huron River. I take pictures, dangle my legs over the bridge, write, listen to illegal music on my iPod knockoff, and wave to canoers paddling beneath. This, to me, is a good day.

There are occasions where I am the most charming person you will ever meet. I have these little spurts of sociability where I don’t mind the phone as much, small talk is not as mind-numbing as usual, and the bars are quasi-okay, even though I’d rather just be smoking a bowl with a handful of friends. Once these small spurts are finished, however, I need lots of alone time for recovery.

My periods of reclusiveness allow for a lot of intense creative work and personal growth to be accomplished in relatively short periods of time. I’m married to my creative work and everyone else comes second. That’s just the way it is, and it’ll probably never change. There’s just this crystallization of thought that happens for me when I am away from people for a while.

I know I probably come off as cold and uncaring a lot of times. But if you’re my friend, I probably adore you in secret but have never told you (I’m working on it). You also probably have the patience of a saint, because I’m aware I’m not a breezy, uncomplicated person to deal with.

So, I thought I’d surface briefly to say hi and thanks and stuff.

And not to be surprised if my head is shaved when next you see me.