Quirkyalone: It’s a mindset

My Big Life Churn

Jan 12, 2010 - Written by Sasha Cagen  |  Filed under: Travel

A preamble: First, apologies for the long gap in posts. I’ve been distracted from blogging by much tumult in my life, a combination of family stuff and a long-anticipated dream that has required much planning. As I post this, I am sitting in Logan Airport at the Fox Sports Box bar, sipping a Cosmopolitan and using the fabulously free holiday wifi provided by Google. I’m about to fly to Brazil for 4-6 (or really, who knows how many) months for a very unplanned adventure. Below is something that I wrote to explain this period of my life to myself (and others). In many ways, this is an extremely quirkyalone journey, but in ways that might not be immediately apparent. How much I will write and share online, I haven’t decided. Check this space, or my personal site. Somewhere along the way, or when it’s all over, I’ll be posting stories and reflections.

“For me the first great joy of traveling is simply the luxury of leaving all my beliefs and certainties at home, and seeing everything I thought I knew in a different light, and from a crooked angle.”—Pico Iyer, “Why We Travel”

I am officially in a “life churn” mode. When I’m feeling more Australian and mystical, I might call it my walkabout. I like the violence in the words “life churn”; there is something comfortingly accurate about the language. There is something violent in making big life changes. For me, that was disassembling my apartment of four years. My couch is scattered to the Craigslist winds. A friend is driving my Corolla “Martha,” and my belongings are in beautifully taped purchased boxes (a move so adult and unlike all my others) and squeezed into an 11 x 6 storage unit.

Three suitcases worth of clothes for all seasons are at my mother’s house in Rhode Island, where I am staging my vagabonding adventures. I obsessively compare flights on Kayak and Vayama. I’ve purchased way too many Lonely Planets, because it’s way too hard to decide where to go. For the next six months, I will mostly be on walkabout: so far the known countries are Iceland, France, and Brazil, but honestly anything could happen. That is largely what I am seeking: the unexpected.

My friend Chris coined the term “life churn” a few years ago when we were walking through Prospect Park in Brooklyn. We were talking about our respective homes, where we had lived since college graduation (New York City for him, and San Francisco for me) and whether we should move.

We’ve both been stay-ers for the previous ten years and wondered if we were missing out by being so faithful to one city. Chris suggested that life churns are good for you: they shake things up and get you out of old patterns and into new ones. It’s part of the whole “change is good” philosophy (or assumption). The term “life churn” sounded genius to me, and I filed it away as part of my private lexicon.

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An Unexpectedly (Quirky)alone New Year’s in Rio de Janeiro

Jan 13, 2009 - Written by Sasha Cagen  |  Filed under: Featured, Solitude, Travel

My friend Jenny just reminded me that I have a New Year’s problem, which tends to emerge in a particularly virulent way when I travel. The problem is mad indecision. I feel the full force of the road not taken. In San Francisco, I can accept an uneventful New Year’s Eve with close friends, but on the road, I can’t get it through my head that New Year’s Eve doesn’t have to fulfill a vision. Three years ago I couldn’t decide between staying in New York with my friends Jenny and Adam or spending the New Year with my father and stepmother on Cape Cod, which in retrospect, seems insane that there was even a question. I was suffering from insomnia at the time and was afraid of being exhausted and out all night in the frigid New York  cold. I chose safety—the Cape Cod with family option—and cursed myself when I found myself on a couch with my father watching Seinfeld at 11:30. I didn’t sleep anyway, so annoyed with myself for choosing the Most Geriatric New Year’s Ever.

This year I spent New Year’s week in Rio de Janeiro, which is an experience I will never forget. Jenny asked me “What was the high and low of your trip?” All I could think of was New Year’s Eve, a focal point of anxiety for days leading up to the trip, and a story to tell. I was in Brazil for a spontaneous weeklong (second) trip. The flight was purchased in mid-December. No, I don’t have a boyfriend there, which is what everyone assumes. I had just been in Brazil in September. The stars had aligned with a bizarrely cheap ticket and a place to stay for New Year’s, the high point of Braizlian partying for the year, second only to Carnaval. I have this Brazil fascination, which I haven’t completely understood yet.

What I want to tell you about is New Year’s. It’s a first-world problem to have too many choices, but the pain from being unable to decide is real.  I am not as brave as I come off. In fact, I am still shaken by the telling of this story. But I did experience about five minutes of quirkyalone bliss in the midst of this adventure. Because of that . . and because it strikes me now that New Year’s 2009 was also the the tenth anniversary of this birth of this concept (I first uttered the word “quirkyalone” on New Year’s Day 1999) I want to share this tale.

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