Reading a friend of mine's post helped me put into perspective an interesting phenomenon that I've been experiencing of late. I've been spending a lot of time by myself lately, and while that's usually a pretty good thing because I'm an introvert, it's been stressful as well. Stress is something I'm particularly aware of, I can feel it start bubbling halfway down my spine before it really gets started, and if I'm really stressed out it's like having someone sitting on your shoulders, trying to direct your attention in unhealthy directions. That's a metaphor, of course. I don't have hallucinations or shoulder devils, at least as far as I know. But yeah, I've been spending a lot of time by myself, and it has been making me pay attention to myself - the "who I am when I'm alone", I suppose. I have an instinctive fear response to this, which I suspect a lot of americans have these days. The thing is, I'm not afraid of who I am when I'm by myself, because I already know. I'm worried about obscurity, about being tangental in other people's lives. Not really, not anymore, but that's the knee-jerk emotional response that happens first. Then after thinking about it a little while, I realize that that is not going to happen. Even if I were that unimportant to everyone else in my life, which is so far from true as to be ridiculous, I made a decision a long time ago that I was important to *me*. What I do with my life, my time, etc, don't have to be important to other people as long as I'm doing things I believe in. As long as I'm trying (emphasis on trying, most days) to take my life in a direction that is important to me.