There's a corollary to 'if solitary, be not idle', which is, 'if solitary, do not waste time talking to people who aren't there' ie the ones in your head. Recently I started noticing exactly how much I do this, and it's a lot. And now I remember why fandom came as such a relief to me in Japan. Instead of yelling at the folk who cause me pains, as D Parker put it, I was meditating on the motivations and emotions of various anime characters. I mean, they were quite as non-corporeal as those various roommates, classmates, coworkers, and Japanese businessmen who smoked under the No Smoking signs whom I was mentally castigating, but at least I wasn't *angry* anymore. Being no longer fannish, I don't have that recourse now when I'm arguing with my mother (dead these forty years) about something she said in 1972, but I think I should try to find one.

(Didn't realize there were three verses to Parker's Frustration:

If I had a shiny gun,
I could have a world of fun
Speeding bullets through the brains
Of the folk who give me pains;

Or had I some poison gas,
I could make the moments pass
Bumping off a number of
People whom I do not love.

But I have no lethal weapon-
Thus does Fate our pleasure step on!
So they still are quick and well
Who should be, by rights, in hell. )