Quirkyalone

During my recent Commonwealth Club talk about “The State of Sex and Dating in San Francisco” I met Nicole Daedone, the founder of One Taste, a center dedicated to authentic female sexuality. Nicole and her collaborators have written a “Turned-On Women’s Manifesto” to exhort women to fully express who they are. Among other gems, the manifesto tells us that a turned-on women:

–”will not sacrifice truth in order to be appropriate”
– “knows there is wisdom in darkness”
–”ignites other women. She refuses to deal in the accepted inter-female commerce of one-downmanship, publicly cataloging all the ways her life isn’t going well to make other women feel safe.”
–”knows that if she doesn’t want sex, it’s because she’s not having the right kind of sex. A turned-on woman wants sex that creates energy rather than depletes it. She seeks the slow burn, the kind of sex that heats her up from the inside out, stoking her fire and powering her journey.”
–”operates at the edges of her own capacity at all times. She knows that stormy nights break into the most beautiful sunrises. She believes, she gives, she tries again, and she doesn’t check out. Courage is her middle name.”

The manifesto is long; there are many beautiful lines designed to inspire.

The Turned-On Women’s Movement is hosting a Turned-On Women’s Retreat this weekend, April 15-17. I’ll be attending, and I am quite curious about how turned-on I will be by Sunday. Will I be a live wire?

P.S. Still waiting for the YouTube from the Commonwealth Club talk on sex and dating–the panel discussion was hilarious and true and I am sure many will enjoy it. I will post that when I get it.

My sister tipped me off to a neat tool for self-reflection that you quirkyalones might enjoy. It’s called 750words.com and it’s a site that celeverly encourages you to post 750 words a day. Inspired by The Artist’s Way, the founder wanted to create a site to help people write three “morning pages.” There are 250 words per page, thus 750 as the magic number.

The site provides nifty statistics on your writing, allowing you to track words typed per minute, amount of time it takes to reach 750 words, and how much you use “I,” “we,” or “them” in your entries. There are also bar charts that supposedly reveal your mood at the time of writing, but these are pretty suspect.

I can’t help butI feel suspicious of an online diary site where I post my innermost thoughts. Isn’t this a gold mine beyond belief for researchers, marketers, or anyone who wants to use my own thoughts against me? Sometimes the Internet feels like one big “cross-your-fingers” exercise where you hope everything you disclose doesn’t come back to haunt you. That’s my caveat, your call on the cost-benefit analysis of this nifty service.

I will be speaking on a Commonwealth Club panel called “The State of Sex and Dating in San Francisco” on Thursday, 3/31. The topic of online dating is sure to come up in this online-dating-drenched, tech-obsessed city. So will the “slow sex movement” as I will be sharing the panel with Nicole Daedone, creator of “the fifteen minute orgasm” (which *I think* has something to do what what she calls “orgasmic meditation”) and the founder of One Taste, a center focused on female sexuality. Ethan Watters author of Urban Tribes will also be part of the conversation. Come on down! The program will also be broadcast on KALW, one of our NPR affiliates, and posted on YouTube.

During 2010, as I traveled alone through France, Brazil, Colombia, and Argentina, I regularly encountered people who find it courageous to travel alone. I remember a hairstylist in Bogota. As she blow-dryed my hair, she told me she couldn’t picture it. I asked her why. She couldn’t really say. So it goes. For most people, traveling alone is unimaginable.

Traveling alone still gives me a thrill, but it’s not scary anymore, I’ve done it so much. Traveling alone can be occasionally lonely, yes. I have felt pangs of loneliness at times. Scary, in South America or Europe, rarely. It’s easy to meet people when you travel alone if you stay at hostels and hook up with couchsurfing, a global network of travelers who support each other through hosting and advice. People think that couchsurfing is only for finding a place to stay, but it’s also for making friends. Go to the “groups” section and find the city you’re visiting, find out what people in the couchsurfing community are planning. Post a message saying that you are coming to town, does anyone have advice or want to have coffee? Couchsurfing members are astonishingly friendly and helpful.

Here are five reasons to travel alone, some classic, some idiosyncratic. There are also reasons to travel with a romantic partner or with friends. Each experience is unique, but traveling alone is undoubtedly rich. Add yours in the comments.

1. Learn how to make decisions. For me, traveling alone was one crash course in making decisions–just keep on rolling the dice and see what comes up. Stop the research. Stop the analysis paralysis. Just keep choosing and living. In travel, everything is as it is, and there’s always another day to change course and choose again. A lot more happens in life when you stop worrying about what to do and just go. That problem dogged me in the year before I made the decision to travel. I was so freaked out by the idea of putting my life in storage and jumping off the known career path that I pondered the decision to death. I planned to travel only four months and wound up going for over a year. Once I got started I didn’t want to stop.

2. Openness to the world. The sense of risk and heightened reward is what draws me to traveling alone. Traveling with a friend can be an adventure too, but the adventure quotient is usually higher when you are alone. You’re more vulnerable in the sense that you have to seek out company and help. There is a lucky charm in traveling alone. My friend Mark lived in Rio for three years right by the beach in Ipanema. On a solo trip to Rio I stayed with him and he jokingly told me he could always spot the solo travelers by the red streaks on their backs: the spot they couldn’t reach themselves with sunscreen. Apt observation and probably true for some solo travelers but not all. But hey, just because I’m traveling alone doesn’t mean I can’t ask a hunky Carioca volleyball player to put sunscreen on the hard-to-reach places. That’s the advantage of traveling alone, isn’t it? Openness to adventure.

3. The grace of trusting in strangers. Traveling alone also teaches you to trust your fellow men and women. They are the ones who help you out when you are in need. I will never forget the man who stopped a long-distance bus for me in Colombia so he could go buy me Coke and toilet paper (I confessed to him that I had “digestive” issues right before we got on the bus). Then he invited me to his family’s home for lunch, and I still get emails from the family saying they will never forget me. I have had similar experiences all over Brazil and Colombia. The kindness and welcoming spirit is unbelievable.

4. Star in your own movie. When you travel alone, the trip is completely yours. You are the star of your own movie. All the mistakes are yours to make, the serendipitous discoveries to enjoy, and the insights to savor. The recollection of the trip is entirely personal and private. Even though I have blogged extensively about my travels, there is no one who was along the whole journey with me who can say what it was all about. Some people prefer to share memories and make meaning from the trip together. That is beautiful as well, but there is also a soul-searching power in doing an odyssey on your own.

When we set out on an extended travel by ourselves, we may not know why we are going when we begin, and it may only be clear when we come back. When you finally understand the narrative of your solo trip, it’s your secret.

Me and my Belgian BFF

Lindo Como Vos: A professional tango singer (and taxi driver) Victor Diaz serenades me on the ride home from a milonga, Zona Tango in Balvanera, extremely local, sort of grungy, one of my favorites. I predict this will be the opening scene of a longer documentary piece I make on the passion of tango addicts in Buenos Aires. How can I resist after this? Collaborators, funding, this is your call to join me.

(I’m catching up on old posts from my travels to Buenos Aires . Look forward to more, much much more as I share some of the more posts that seem relevant for Quirkyalone. My full travel blog is available at my unplannedadventure.)

My jaw dropped fifteen minutes ago. I was driving along in Oakland, California, after a lovely outing with a friend, looking through the radio dial for beautiful music, when I stumble upon someone who sounds like me but is not me. Radio host Rubberband Girl explaining the quirkyalone concept–and even the quirkyslut–confidently,as part of her quirkyalone-themed radio show to celebrate singledom and solitude on KALX, Berkeley’s student-run radio station. I love that the quirkyalone movement is strong that I don’t even have to do the interviews on February 14. Go listen to this beautiful four-hour show of songs expressing quirkyalone sentiment here. Here’s her set list.