Living Alone

Krakauer, in EIGER DREAMS:
Survivors of grim wilderness trips overwhelmingly recommend avoiding hyperactive personalities.

David Roberts:
I was becoming, in the stagnation of our situation, both aggressive and paranoid. So I would try to keep from thinking about it; instead I would daydream about the pleasure of warmer, easier living. But all the while I would be working myself into a silent rage over the sound of Don's chewing as he ate a candy bar.

Victor F Nelson (a convict and an expert on solitary confinement):
The human being, by and large, is a very bad companion for himself; where he has to face himself for any length of time, he acquires a deep disgust and a restless anxiety which makes him seek almost any escape.

Krakauer:
On a solo trip there won't be any altercations over whose turn it is to do the dishes, but when it comes right down to it, if the forecast looks bleak, most people prefer even bad company to no company at all. Quarreling at least passes the time.

I keep ungodly hours. Right now it's 02:26. I'm aiming to sleep by 3am. Sometimes, if inspiration strikes, I might be flicking and pounding my fingers around a keyboard beyond 6am.
I've had two housemates while I've been in Korea, and both times I was begging my school for my own apartment.
My first companion was in his fifties, Donald. Jeepers, even saying that name just gives me absurd recollections of the cartoon character. He was a soft and harmless fellow, who loved getting up at 5am and often walked about 5-7km and back to a very far away supermarket called E-Mart(bypassing another supermarket, Carrefour, half as far a way in order to save W300 on groceries and also never considering doing the marathon trip in either bus or taxi, because that would undo the W300 saved).
Since he was often waking up, as I was bedding down, you can imagine, we weren't a match made in heaven. In fact, it's fair to say, I am the one whose hours make for a very uncomfortable co-existence. But then, it's also fair to say that eventually I made sure I was not in the apartment when he was there, and when he was there, I tried to be asleep.

The pattern seemed to work like this: an initial honeymoon period, followed by a period of boredom and withdrawal. After all, you didn't choose to live with this person. You got thrown together by your school.

The next housemate was a lot more hyper, and I altered my pattern completely so we could have a decent chance of living together happily ever after. We went running together. Sometimes drinking. But then the phonecalls started, at 3 in the morning, and the drunken returns from Itaewon (at 8am) and finally the loud noises of two people (and not always the same two) using a bed as a rowing boat, and going 'urgh urgh URGH!'.
Maybe when your roomate is having sex every night and you're not, you start to prefer the idea of living alone.
The first argument Jared and I had was about water. I'd just finished my first indoor training workout ever, and when I went to the refrigerator, the bottle of water I'd bought wasn't there. He'd just gulped it down.
I remember saying to him, 'Didn't you think maybe I bought this water to actually drink?' His response was to say I had drank his water plenty of times. That was the wrong answer, as I stood there, tired, thirsty.
The next argument was about soap. I just couldn't stand the idea of this guy using soap that I'd imported from South Africa. It was called Protex, and he was using mine, and buying none of his own. He had a lot of personal hygiene stuff. A nose hair tweezer. Twenty shampoos. Three fake rolexes to suit each occasion. Suddenly it bothered me that he was lathering his tattoos with my soap. Then he'd leave dishes and bottles of beer and garbage lying around, then it was one thing, then another. Quite soon I had to be careful I didn't contradict my own terms...and you know, when I moved into my own place, I realised that dishes being left overnight, or soap, really didn't bother me. It was having my space...taken over...that did. It's having your space altered against your will that becomes irritating, and then, apparently, intolerable.

Now that I live alone the biggest danger is that I never go out. And as soon as I've developed the hermit persona to a T, then I am out all the time. One minute I seem, apparently, to have a gift for sloth, but as Krakauer says: "(you must)reach the point where sleeping further becomes impossible."
Then, the Ironman lark starts and there's another contradiction. I'm the first to admit that my cycles are very chaotic. I fly by the seat of my pants, I have an addiction to being just-on-time or almost-late. I preplan what I'm doing and if things happen unexpectedly I tend to try to sidestep them or jump over them. This erratic moodiness is the lot of living with, dare I say it, an artist.
When the hyperactive cycle ends, often with a cold or flu forcing me to slow down, I tend to jump into an internalised convalescence, both physically and psychically... spent writing, thinking, sleeping, dreaming, prognosticating...
There's no one around me to say, "Hey, you've been inside all day. Let's go for a walk."
I abhor the phone, and don't use a cellphone.
A week of staying up to obsess over the latest obession, whether the ancient court documents of Jean d'Arc, or Virginia Woolf, or Tolkien, and getting little or no sleep. I gnaw the bone for every shred of its meat, and go to sleep with my mind still chewing. I arrive at the weekend, sometimes, and just sleep (especially if it's hot, because what's the point of going out if it's 36 outside, and so humid it's like walkign into a wet blanket all the time?)

And now it's 03:17.