Leaning to Live with Yourself #2

I found a quote today on the booksellers' newsleter, "Shelf Awareness," that I really like. It's from In the Fullness of Time: 32 Women on Life After 50, edited by Emly W. Upham and Linda Gravenson and due out in late April from Atria. It expresses a totally different view of learning to live with yourself--I'm almost there but not quite. Here goes:
I like living alone. . . I like that I can take as many naps as I feel like taking and nobody knows. . . . .I'm seldom lonely. I have three dogs, twelve grandchildren, and four grown kids. I have a friend who now and then drives down with his dog. We've known each other so long we don't have to talk, and when we do we don't have to say anything. When he asks me if I'd like to take a trip around the world, I can say yes, knowing that I'll never have to go. . . . Sometimes I feel sorry for those of my friends who are looking around for a mate. I don't want one, and I don't want to want one. It has taken me the better part of sixty years to enjoy the inside of my own head, and I do that best when I'm by myself."
Amen!
The author does mention that inertia drives both her and her friend, which I don't feel is true of me. And today, I'm certainly not living just inside my own head. I had lunch with a colleague I've known for some time, but never well, and we recently discovered several things in common. It was a lively lunch with neither of us at a loss for words, and I hope we do it again soon. Then tonight three old friends--publishing buddies--came for dinner. It was the first night for wine on the porch--lovely. We visited and laughed and discussed serious problems, from publishing to the writing Thomas Jefferson out of textbooks--all in all a good evening.
Now the kitchen is clean and I'm tucked away at my desk, which is exactly where and how I like to end each day. Fran was going to spend the night and didn't, and I wish she had--after all I'd changed the sheets on the guest bed just for her. But I was also glad to be able to check my email, finish this blog and read a bit without appearing rude. See? I do like living alone, inside my own head and world.