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MY NAME is Andrea and I am a loner. I don’t mind it most of the time, although it’s hard to order a large pizza or take advantage of group rates on vacations.
I know what you’re thinking: “Uh oh, look out.” I can’t blame you, because the only time loners make the news is when they go on shooting sprees. Loners have bad reputations because of this. Everyone who ever did anything remotely nutty is said to have been a loner. Hitler for sure. The guy who shot John Lennon. This is unfair. I know many friendly people who are almost never alone, yet are still quite batty and prone to violence.
Personally, I have never shot anyone. I have never owned a gun or held a gun or wanted a gun or wanted to shoot anyone. In fact, these days I hardly ever see anyone to shoot—that’s how alone I am most of the time. What I do instead is paint lovely pictures and glue beads onto things (see photo) and paint furniture. All that is hardly newsworthy, although if I were not a loner these things would never get done. That’s the side of loner life you never hear about.
The worst thing about being a loner is that there’s nobody to share it with. There’s no Loner’s Club or Loner.com. This is a bit of a drag, since it would be nice to compare notes every once in awhile with others of my ilk on how they spend their time. So I may start a club for loners. We won’t have meetings—I’m thinking weekly, but maybe monthly if not having them weekly is too burdensome. There will not be a magazine or any dues. Membership will be completely private. In fact, I may already have a lot of members and just not know.
—Andrea Rouda
Andrea Rouda blogs at The Daily Droid.
Was sitting and thinking to myself, “I wonder if there’s a ‘loners anonymous’…surely someone has thought of it, cuz it’s a slam-dunk, word-wise.” So I typed it in on my DuckDuckGo private search and wa-lah(?)! Here it is and here I am. Just an observation without digging any further into the worlds of loners than this: with the worldwide state of affairs becoming more polarized every time politicians and their critics/followers open their mouths, it makes life more difficult for loners cuz they are perceived to be ‘not with us, but against us’ . By not joining one side or the other, they are suspected by both…and more apt to be singled out or even blamed for whatever pops into the minds of the aforementioned types.
I have a personal experience which has reinforced my views on this subject.