Solitude Soundtrack

I don't often get lonely, and I consider it one of my best qualities. I'm happier sitting at home with popcorn and Netflix for five nights in a row than having to deal with society or human interaction. Once in awhile, this changes, and it throws me for a loop.

Other times, I just roll with it.

Last Wednesday was something of a trying day in the office, and once the sweet sights and smells of freedom filled my ears and eyes on the streets of my little corner of downtown, I realized I wasn't ready to go home. I wasn't ready for five hours of solitude and trying to figure out what to eat and even harder, trying to figure out what to watch. It was a fine line that I don't often draw; one where I wanted to be with people, but I didn't want to deal with people. I discovered a perfect medium when I stopped by my apartment rental office to pick up my new and improved set of digital keys.

My maintenance guy and I have what I like to call an amicable relationship. We chat, we have some similar interests, I find him highly entertaining and he probably finds me quirky and bizarre, but I'll happily delusionate (boom, new word, it's my blog and I'm allowed) that I can be entertaining too. There he sat, manning the front desk of the complex, the actual office manager nowhere in sight. I found myself sitting down and getting talked at for the better part of a half an hour, and I couldn't have been happier.

He didn't only save me from an evening of alone-with-my-thoughts, but he introduced me to Drive-By Truckers: a band that sounds like they will be way more Toby Keith than they do. They make the best kind of roots rock, an alternative sound, with just enough country to satisfy me. This is what I like to call "cowboy music." Songs with a story that give your heartstrings a tug for one reason or another. Songs you would hear sung fireside in the desert. Sometimes lyrics are only pretty and not much more, and I think that's okay. I find it to be an unassuming specialty of theirs, and I'm into it.

Human interaction has never been my strong suit. Someone told me once that this is unnatural; that my partiality to being alone defies human nature and even the very reason that natives before us formed tribes. Looking back, I feel that my person was attacked more than I did in the moment (this has been happening to me a lot lately...a story for another day). I don't and never have been of the mindset that this facet of my personality is one that needs to be fixed or improved. I've also never said it's necessarily good, but being an introvert is not a problem. It can be an obstacle, but it's not wrong. I'm good at spending time alone and consider that a valuable quality. Something to be pondered over the following playlist. 

Goddamn Lonely Love
First Air of Autumn
Two Daughters and a Beautiful Wife
Everybody Needs Love
Outfit
Get Downtown
Santa Fe
The Righteous Path
Perfect Timing