From Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running:

“As I mentioned before, competing against other people, whether in daily life or in my field of work, is just not the sort of lifestyle I’m after. Forgive me for stating the obvious, but the world is made up of all kinds of people. Other people have their own values to live by, and the same holds true with me. These differences give rise to disagreements, and the combination of these disagreements can give rise to even greater misunderstandings. As a result, sometimes people are unfairly criticized. This goes without saying. It’s not much fun to be misunderstood or criticized, but rather a painful experience that hurts people deeply.

“As I’ve gotten older, though, I’ve gradually come to the realization that this kind of pain and hurt is a necessary part of life. If you think about it, it’s precisely because people are different from others that they’re able to create their own independent selves. Take me as an example. It’s precisely my ability to detect some aspects of a scene that other people can’t, to feel differently than others and choose words that differ from theirs, that’s allowed me to write stories that are mine alone. And because of this we have the extraordinary situation in which quite a few people read what I’ve written. So the fact that I’m me and no one else is one of my greatest assets. Emotional hurt is the price a person has to pay in order to be independent.” (pages 18-19, paperback edition.)

“I don’t think most people would like my personality. There might be a few—very few, I would imagine—who are impressed by it, but only rarely would anyone like it. Who in the world could possibly have warm feelings, or something like them, for a person who doesn’t compromise, who instead, whenever a problem crops up, locks himself away alone in a closet? But is it ever possible for a professional writer to be liked by people? I have no idea. Maybe somewhere in the world it is. It’s hard to generalize. For me, at least, as I’ve written novels over many years, I just can’t picture someone liking me on a personal level. Being disliked by someone, hated and despised, somehow seems more natural. Not that I’m relieved when it happens. Even I’m not happy when someone dislikes me.” (pages 20-21.)

Somehow it takes a load off, what this Zen cat is saying about those of us who would write. We’re not natural, we’re not unnatural, we just are as we are.

Maybe it’s having tended bar the last six nights, and maybe it’s having slept all day, but I have little real desire to go out this Friday night, even if friends were handy. It’s a little odd to admit, but solitude and what would appear as doing very little is in order. Even the intrusion of having to order delivery Chinese was a stretch, brought on by real hunger. Who knows how late I’ll be up, or when I’ll be up tomorrow. (If the phone rings and it’s work calling, I’m not picking it up this time. The last seven weekend surprises have been enough.)

Muramaki talks, page 36, about the time he and his wife closed his jazz bar business, after some initial success as a novelist: “It was a major directional change—from the kind of open life we’d led for seven years, to a more closed life. I think having this sort of open existence for a period of years was a good thing. I learned a lot of important lessons during that time. It was my real schooling. But you can’t keep up that kind of life forever. Just as with school, you enter it, learn something, and then it’s time to leave.”

One tends to be brave. One wants to be brave. One wishes to be kind to the people who come by, the early ones, the late ones, but ultimately, you get your fill, if you really are to be a novelist. There comes a time to admit that your energies have changed, that you’re tired of being Jesus amongst the publicans and sinners. You don’t get so much personally out of it anyway, at least not in the sense that there’s someone to come home to at the end of the day and share your schedule. Or maybe that’s just something about me, my need for isolation.

There are things you don’t want to admit for some perception of the greater good. You want to perform your service sector job well and cleanly and with kindness. But, for some of us anyway, the admission comes, that you need your time away from people. And it makes life a whole lot easier to realize that.

A writer is, to the human world, a natural phenomenon, like a cloud is part of weather's. Yes, unlikable, solipsistic, what can you do. He tries not to do harm, at least. Dostoevsky put it well. "I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased."