Sounds like Stottlemeyer is sort of rebuilding his self image now and getting to know himself as a separate entity from Karen. Which is good, seems like he’s handling the divorce/loss of his wife better than a lot of people do. You can’t quite compare their divorce with Adrian losing Trudy, though. Karen is still alive, he will still see her, and they might even end up together again, who knows? Adrian has no chance of seeing Trudy again (at least not in this life) and she was murdered and he doesn’t know why. That sort of makes a really big difference.

The image of him in that coat and beaded headbands was pretty strange, though. I couldn’t quite imagine it.

This, from Dr. Kroger’s blog-

“I questioned if this crisis was actually part of a much larger issue: his fear of ever making a mistake. Was there a mistake he once made that continues to haunt him and thus compels him to punish himself?
But instead of answering me, he broke out into a big smile because he suddenly solved the problem. He will simply employ each option on a rotating basis.
"Won't that be a little time consuming?" I asked.
"No," he replied. "It will be unbelievably time consuming."”

-Made me think that Dr. Kroger was onto something (though I'm not sure about the punishing himself part), but wonder if maybe he didn’t take it quite far enough. It seems to me that Adrian’s obsessing over the books and various other chores and really un-necessary tasks that he makes more complicated than they need to be is also a form of avoidance. He seems to be as good as saying that yes, he did make a mistake that haunts him, but he doesn’t want to think about it or talk about it or deal with it, he’d rather change the subject and direct attention away from it. Trying to decide how to arrange his books shouldn’t be such a difficult process, even for him, but if he keeps his mind on trying to figure out the best way to do it, even down to drawing up colored charts and plans, he’s not thinking about something that’s probably more important and more distressing to him. I don’t think cleaning is quite the same as this, that really doesn’t take thought, and sometimes doing something mindless and automatic like cleaning helps you to think more clearly, but something like planning complicated organization and trying to decide something when you pretty much know you can’t make a decision seems like something you do to keep your mind busy and tied up with something inconsequential so you don’t think about something else.

I’m also thinking of house elves again with the punishing himself stuff.

I just had to sort of laugh at Natalie’s blog. It seems like she’s got so many things backwards but it’s not really surprising, the kinds of things she doesn’t have quite right. Like I don’t have the impression that Adrian really knows who he is at all aside from being a detective. He does seem to feel that his main purpose in life is to be a detective; it’s like his only form of personal identity. Sort of like Natalie’s getting that (part of) her purpose is to be Julie’s mom, but missing that it’s not the only thing she’s here for and not her only contribution to the world. We haven’t seen her display any musical or artistic talent, but physically, I have been impressed with her physical skills quite a bit; if I ever got into trouble in a biker bar, I’d want her there. And she’s not a half bad detective, either, she’s just comparing herself to Adrian rather than the average person. And I’m sure that Adrian’s admired and been very grateful for her character strength, self defense skills, social skills, nerve, and courage quite a lot. She doesn’t see how much she impacts other people’s lives, not just Julie’s. And not just Adrian’s for that matter. It’s sort of like ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’, she underestimates her own contributions and talents. She seems to have some self awareness issues of her own.

I wonder too, when she (and other people) say they wish that had some direction or something they knew they were put on the earth to do, if they realize how limiting that seems. If I had a choice between being without a question the best artist in the world and only able to do that one thing while everything else was a struggle for me as it often seems to be the case with Adrian, and being a mediocre artist and mediocre at a few other things the way I am now, I would much rather take the second. I like having more options. And being the very best at something takes a lot of focus and puts a lot of stress on a person. But maybe that’s what she’s been doing while she was drifting from one thing to another; maybe she was collecting experiences and skills. You pick up something and learn stuff with everything you do.