Actually Cat, what you say isn’t so unlike what Martin Hayes said last year in the Catskills.
On Tim Raab’s Catskills photo site, there are pictures that have linked audio. People can go to the picture of Martin Hayes’ class that looks like this to hear the rest of what he had to say:
Cathy’s on the money here; sessions can be lots of fun, in a social, free-beer sort of way, but they are often as destructive as they are instructive and useful. Interesting tunes you’re working on usually take a back seat to (often mangled versions) of common tunes, and unless you’re fortunate enough to have truly great players about all the time, sessions are often dragged down to the lowest common denominator(s) attending them.
My interest in picking up my flute comes entirely from me, and I spend much of my time working on tunes unlikely to be known at a session, anyway - I often end up performing them alone. Many years ago, I asked my teacher whether I should start going to sessions (this was in NYC, where sessions were/are abundant), he (somewhat seriously) referred to them as “the ruination of Irish music”.. I found that funny at the time, and went to sessions anyway; I do think they’re useful experiences, and a skill-set entirely independent of just playing solo (embarassment teaches you a lot). But I did figure out what he meant, eventually - playing well is dependent on good taste and a good, rhythmic sense, both of which are easily undermined by music-by-committee free for alls.. On the rare occasions where a session becomes truly transcendent, where everything just fits, they are wonderful experiences, but they are hard to repeat, or count on, as the prime, or even secondary motivator to just playing.
That’s how it starts..
Shocking and fcukingly disgusting… but then ye start.
Up to you where ye end..
Slan,
D. 
!! It is shocking, isn’t it? And so … inevitable. Inarguable? Ineffable? (well, actually I find it eminently effable 
)
Good to see you, D. 
As a teenager back home in in England,I foolishly took up the whistle and the flute some 25 years ago or so. At that time there were quite a number of ITM sessions in my local area and as an almost fanatical player I made damn sure I attended each and every one of them for a great many years. Looking back I feel that in some ways I gained a lot but also lost a lot. Backstreet pubs are probably not a healthy environment for 15 year old kids quite apart from anything else. I also began to feel the need to ‘compete’ and I started to lose the enjoyment of playing simply for the love of playing. By the time I was into my early twenties, for a great many reasons, that are not nessasarily relevant here, I just quit. Actually I got drunk one night and threw my flute on the fire.
That was it until just a couple of months back when I bought myself a new flute ( which I already feel like chucking on the fire but I have forced air heating and that doesn’t work so good).
Anyway I now live in Canada and there is not much ITM in my neck of the woods and so I can certainly sympathise with your feeling of isolation. It can certainly be a wonderful feeling to sit and play with other likeminded people … so long as they really are likeminded. Musicians, at any level, unfortunately, are like any other human beings and our ego’s can tend to make something ugly out of even the most potentially beautiful of things. I guess what I am saying is that unless you have the deire and ambition to be a ‘virtuoso’ player it is quite okay to just be on your own doing what you love to do. Take it slow. Eventually the right people will appear at the right time and in the meantime there are so many wonderful resources out there ( that simply didn’t exist 20 years back) that you can learn and develop at your own pace and with plenty of people to ask advice from.
Thank you for posting the question that you have. It is one that needed to be put and one that was actually rather brave of you.
Nate