I felt the solitude today. Yesterday was just too busy, I guess, or I was still too tired. Today was more like a normal day, when I had a little time to realize that I'm alone again. It's not a complaint; it's the way I live. But I've had so many other people's lives intertwined with mine for the last week and a half that I find myself looking around for someone to talk to. And finding no one. And realizing it.

Even though I'm content to have no one to answer to but myself, sometimes I get melancholy about the choices I've made and the way things have turned out. I even wonder how much I'm alone because I want to be, and how much just because I didn't pursue a different way.

I think I'm a little bit lucky and a little bit unlucky to be who I am and to live as I do. But that's probably the way it is for everyone. Maybe some people have more luck than others along the way, and I'm sure most people make their own luck, although to different degrees.

It's just easier for us introverts to blame fortune and circumstance than to blame ourselves, wherever blame is appropriate. Most of the time I don't cast blame at all, because most of the time I'm satisfied that I have the life I want and deserve.

When I have these reflective moments, I usually find that the best answer is to shrug and move on. Not much good comes of spinning my wheels in the sand, especially when the tide is coming in. I could use some ice cream, though.