I'm not a loner, but I'm not really its opposite. On 43 Things, one common wish is, "figure out where all the people like me are hiding." I can relate to that really well. And I wrestle frequently with my identity as an strong individualist and my identity among others.

I spend a lot of time alone. I'm a freelance developer, and so I spend most of my day on the computer. But I do like socializing. I like it a lot. And I've always struggled with the question about fitting in. Every so often, when my coffers rise a little, I go on a shopping spree thinking, "Okay, now! Now is the time when I'll start fitting in." And I pick some target group, and I work on blending in. This excitement doesn't last very long, and so my wardrobe is this collection of various experiments or stabs at different groups.

Today, two ideas hit me at the same time that I think may bring this issue to a close. One is a simple re-phrasing:

An argument for "fitting in" is that yes, it's true: birds of a feather do flock together.
But then a knee-jerk response in me came up:

But what if I don't want to flock with anybody? And I think that spoke to me even stronger. I love socializing, but I hate groups. I feel that groups dumb me down, and I feel that only through partnerships or on my own, do I really get what's good for me.

What would be a good word for that? I'm not a loner, but not a group-ist. "Individualist" is a kind of trite word, and who isn't an individualist anyways? I kind of wish I knew German, because I heard that it's easier to construct new words just by tacking on atomic ideas to each other. Maybe if I read the Loner's Manifesto I'd get some new perspective.