David Cartwright wrote:


Can anyone remind me why I'm inflicting this on myself?

Because once you're certificated to do it, you can do proper flying,
and in
fact most of it won't happen in cloud. There's nothing worse than
bumbling
about in the clouds, and you'll want to do it as little as possible.
Instrument certification gives you the ability to go and play on top
where
the sun always shines, to be confident on days when the weather
report says
something other than CAVOK, to navigate without having to constantly
look
out of the window, try to identify what you're flying over and see if
you've
been blown off track, and so on. Who cares if you never have to do an
ILS
approach down to minima - it's just great being able to potter back
home
from somewhere at 5000' in almost empty sky, then amble down through
the
clouds and pop out at 2,000 feet for a conventional visual approach.

Thanks, that's a pretty good answer.

I've got no professional aviation aspirations buy might buy my own
airplane in the reasonably-near future. I can see that I'd get more
utility out of it with the legal right to punch a layer when it's
convenient.