10 years of working from home. 10 years of choosing who I work with. 10 years of living alone. 10 years of very seldom dealing with people with whom I do not want to deal, and if I did, you can bet I was getting paid for it. 10 years of being in almost complete control of my environment, every second of every day.
It's been wonderful. It's also crippled me.
I find myself increasingly incapable of dealing with, well, people. My patience and understanding are gone, replaced with a quick-trigger "Screw this. I'm going home." Tolerance is a muscle, it turns out, and on my body that muscle has atrophied and withered away.
And so I imagine going to therapy to build this muscle back up. I don't particularly like most people, but I also dislike being able to tolerate them for only ten minutes. But then I imagine the therapy sessions, and there's a lot of this:
Me: "I can't spend 10 minutes at the store anymore without intensely wanting to bitch-slap people."Thus do we talk in circles and not get anywhere. And if we're both very lucky, he doesn't get bitch-slapped.
Therapist: "Why is that, do you think?"
Me: "They're entitled jerks."
Therapist: "Why do you think that?"
Me: "Hmm. I suppose that if I had to guess, I'd say it's the average person's obscene sense of entitlement and appalling conduct toward other people."
Therapist: "No, seriously."
Me: "No, seriously."
Therapist: "We can't work on this if you're just going to blame everyone else."
Me: "Okay, then." (gets up)
Therapist: "Please sit down."
(I sit down)
Therapist: "Sigh. So what is it you want from me, John?"
Me: "Is there, like, a pill that makes you not notice that other people are dicks?"
Therapist: "No, seriously."
Me: "No, seriously."