Quirkyalone

the view from gorgeous Barichara, Colombia

I noticed a lot of military in the streets, but I never felt fear of violence. Colombia felt a lot safer than Brazil. Colombians whom I would meet on buses and would help me through my various travails (like being sick on a bus, or without a place to stay for the night) would tell me there are buenos and malos (good people and bad people) in their country, but there are far more buenos than malos. I hadn’t met any malos so I didn’t really know what they were talking about. In fact, for me, the country seemed overwhelmingly full of buenos, people who are sweet and eager to help.

The distinguishing characteristic of Colombians, for me, have been super amable (nice) people. When they say goodbye, they say, “Que le vaya bien” (“that you go well”) and “cuidate” (take care of yourself). Colombians always say hello and how are you. It is common to be affectionate with strangers, and call them “mi amor” (my love) or “mami” (honey). People are exceedingly generous. (Though they can be savage in line at the corner store, not waiting their turn! There is a disorder in Colombian culture that can be infuriating. The concept of a line sometimes does not seem to exist.)

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Early days of tango lessons, my first teacher Mauricio helps me find the position in his garage studio

In my pre-tango life (funny how I could already say that, the pre-tango life. . . ) I felt a certain kind of despair. I would look at other people who have passions like ceramics or watching football (soccer). They know that they are going to enjoy a day if they spend it doing ceramics or watching the World Cup. I just couldn’t think of any one passion in my life where I would fairly reliably find joy.

How many Saturday afternoons did I spend shopping with a friend? Buying a new shirt might be sort of fun but it’s an expensive (and also cheap) form of joy. I’m not sure finding a great dress on sale qualifies as joy, more a thrill. Yoga, not really. I enjoy it for its emotional and physical benefits. Tennis is occasionally fun, but I can’t say that I care enough to work on my serve. Writing is a need and it makes my life, mind and spirit infinitely richer. But I can’t say that writing consistently brings me joy. It also has brought me angst. So where is the joy in my life? That zone in my life where I lose track of time and become one with whatever I am doing, that gives me energy and uplift?

Traveling during a career break is the ideal time to hunt for new passions. While I’ve traveled in Brazil and Colombia this year, I haven’t tried to be too desperate about it, but I was on the search for something that might give me joy at home too. Traveling, I would say, is a joy. I get to be the amateur (for the love of it) sociologist that I naturally am, observing other cultures. But for most of this year, I felt like I was trying out a lot of things that I didn’t love enough to commit to, like scuba diving and surfing. I did a week of surfing lessons in Jericoacoara, Brazil. I enjoyed understanding the velocity of a wave and how one might try to ride it, but I wasn’t a natural and I thought, I just don’t care enough to spend a month of my life battling waves. I enjoyed watching surfers, especially the women, but just couldn’t imagine getting there myself. Ditto with capoeira: I like it, but would I ever get that good at it? I wondered, when am I ever going to find anything that I love enough to commit to it? We usually enjoy things that we are good at, and yet, it takes time and effort to become proficient at something new. If I only pursue things that I am good at from the beginning, my activities will be rather limited.

Patience. I think I finally found a passion that suits me. There were times when I really thought I was going to quit tango and give up, because the basics of the dance like the walk and the posture weren’t coming to me. But I stuck with it and found the right teachers and over time I gradually improved. There were also “big bang” improvements when suddenly the dance clicked. I am at the beginning of a lifelong learning curve, but over time I am loving tango more and more and now I am eager to visit the homeland, Buenos Aires.

Now that I have finally found something that I actually love enough to commit to, I can see that it makes a big different to find the right fit. Maybe this is how people feel when they finally meet a lifelong mate. They realize that they were just trying too hard with all those people who weren’t the right fit. Now I can see that tango is a fit for me in a way that a lot of other sports, dances, hobbies—most things, in fact—are just not.

For example, kitesurfing. While I was traveling I met tons of women who brimmed with energy and enthusiasm when they talked about kitesurfing, They talked about the adrenaline and I love adrenaline rushes, so I thought, I’m going to try this! Well, I did. I just couldn’t quite see it. It’s possible that I quit my lessons after one day because the water was way too cold at Lago Calima near Cali. But I kept thinking, for the cost of one hour of kitesurfing lessons I could do four hours of tango lessons!

Tango is a way better fit for me than kitessurfing. Tango is about connection and I enjoy feeling connection with others because I am such an interior person. Kitesurfing is totally solo and feels a little lonely to me. I am already lost in my own thoughts. Tango is a language, a communication between two people, and I enjoy languages. Tango has an endless depth to it in terms of styles and moves, and the depth of emotion expressed, both light and dark, and I like depth. Kitesurfing must have a lot of depth too but I just don’t care to learn it. Kitesurfing involves a lot of equipment and I hate dealing with equipment, it would be a chore to me to set up and take apart the kite every time. All you need for tango are proper dancing shoes and music. I love that.

It brings me a feeling of peace to realize that there is at least one thing out there that I love enough to really commit to and learn deeply. In some way, understanding the qualities that bring my joy in tango helps me to understand how to bring more joy into my life with other things too. I’ve realized that my joy really comes through collective forms of music and dance–singing and dancing with other people. I am very much at the beginning with tango. It’s even possible this will be a passing fancy, though I hope not. Tango can be a lifelong love, and people usually get better as they get older. That is an exciting thought.

Here is a show that I did as my finale in Cali, after two months of taking tango classes. Oscar, my partner, was my dance teacher for the last two weeks. We got so excited about our classes we decided to do a “presentation” of at La Matraca in Cali to show off everything I had learned. Both dances were improvised. The second one is “tango nuevo” and very much so (improvised). What a moment in time!

This essay was originally posted on my travel blog My Unplanned Adventure.

Note: I’m going to share some quirkyalone-relevant posts from my ongoing travel blog here. Enjoy! For non-quirkyalone-related travel observations, you can read my blog My Unplanned Adventure.

At first I thought it was just me. My self-esteem had never been so high. On a near daily basis, while I was traveling in Northeastern Brazil, I got compliments on how linda, or beautiful, I am.

But then I started talking to other female travelers. It turns out that every foreign woman is gorgeous in Brazil. The compliments come from women as well as men. It was only slight a letdown, to find out that every other female traveler I talked to was having a similar experience: being told that she was linda, linda, linda.

Now I am back in Rio, though, and almost wistful for those days. I remember Carioca men as being incredibly aggressive, and that’s certainly their reputation. But I have noticed now that there are downpours and droughts. It’s hard to know why men don’ t serenade me any more–maybe I am giving off a jaded, inaccessible vibe now. Maybe I stopped meeting their eyes.

Brazilian men are legendary for their passion and persistence. It’s exciting to feel so wanted, their eyes can be so insistent in a way that North American eyes don’t have the courage to be. But on the other hand, it becomes hard to understand why you want to marry me when we met only fifteen minutes before. Their passion seems so ephemeral, and at times, almost insultingly generic, like they are passionate about any foreign woman.

Being blonde takes the experience to a whole new level. “Being blonde in Brazil means you never have to wear jewelry,” my German, blonde friend Teresa said to me one day, and I knew she had hit the nail on the head–I had stopped bothering with earrings. I have never felt particularly exoticized as a type before.

When I went home to Rhode Island in April, I dyed my hair a slighly darker blonde, verging on brown. Perhaps that’s why they are less drawn to my honey.

I talked to my friend Marcello about the Brazilian penchant for passionate, urgent overtures–he explained that when Brazilian men feel something, and they want to express it, even if the depth of their feeling seems kind of bizarre.

I used to compare San Francisco men to Brazilian men and wish that San Francisco men were more forward, but now that I have seen the flip side, I’ve grown appreciate the subtlety and slowness with which American men say what they are feeling–they say less, but I trust them more.

Then again, my ego is missing the outrageous flattery from Brazilian men now that I am not getting it. What can I say? I want it all! There’s so much that I like about Brazilian men in general: they’re generous–always quick to pour the beer first for everyone else at the table; helpful to a fault; fun; optimistic; funny. Where can I find a passionate, genuine man? More subtle and trustworthy Brazilian men are rumored to exist. Is he here, or in Bali (where Elizabeth Gilbert–and soon in the movie version, Julia Roberts–found her ideal Brazilian lover in Eat Pray Love?)

Note: I wrote this post a year ago while I was still in the United States (and not traveling in South America), but realize that it should have been posted all along, so here it is! At the end is a postscript written from the perspective of my year traveling outside the U.S.

On a recent work trip to New York, the same conversation came up over and over again. People who didn’t know about Quirkyalone kept telling me that dating in New York was brutal. I was sort of shocked. I am so used to complaining about the brutality of dating in San Francisco and have become quite self-conscious about my complaints, wondering if it’s just me complaining or creating my own reality with a negative outlook. I was psyched, in a way, to cede the floor to another legion of people telling me how brutal it was to date in their town.

San Francisco is a city with an embarassment of riches in terms of the dating pool, but somehow, with so many people to choose from, we develop an ADD mentality.

It’s a disposable dating culture. we meet people online or off, go out, make out or sleep together (maybe), and may never speak again. It’s on to the next person without acknowledgment of the conversation or the kiss or the sex, or the promises made of how what we would do in the future. I have been complaining about the brutality of disposable-dating in San Francisco for a while now. I’m not saying that I am blameless in this regard either, whatever that would mean. I am simply pointing out that we have a consumer mentality when it comes to dating.

Perhaps this is just the nature of dating, but I can’t help but believe that online dating, in the way it dramatically increases the possibilities for easily meeting someone new, makes us treat each other more disposably. We operate outside the constraints of a moral community of friends and family, and it’s so easy to disappear into the ether, only to cross each oher when you see each other “online now” on match.com.

So imagine my surprise and satisfaction on a recent trip to New York City to hear people complain even more vociferously about the struggle of dating in their own city. Listening to people tell me unsolicitedly how hard it was to date in New York, I thought, Wow, maybe it’s actually worse here! In fact, one man in his mid-thirties, CEO of his own company, told me he was moving to San Francisco because he couldn’t find “l’amour” in New York. (He was French.)

Here’s a snapshot of what I heard. Much of the discussion focused on Manhattan. It’s easy to talk about one slice of New York and think you’re talking about all of it.

• A married woman who writes about dating for Yahoo interviews singles for a living  says that people date differently in Manhattan. She used to live in San Francisco. They’re more driven and businesslike in their approach to dating in New York, she said. They make quicker judgments. (Gosh, I thought people made snap judgments here?) She believe that the New Yorker driven nature makes it harder for people to mate, but it is a fun place to be single because people in their 30s, 40s, and 50s have so much company.

• An entrepreneur in his thirties told me women judge quickly on the basis of his wallet. He told me they try to suss out his economic status, subtly or not: Does you have roommates? He also thought that women in New York weren’t very interested in sex, only money. I thought New York had more sexual energy than San Francisco. Most people I know in Brooklyn say it’s easy to find someone to sleep with, and hard to find a guy who will buy you a drink.

• A writer friend concurred that his dating life had slowed down in New York. He said New York can encourage a feeling of inadequacy, that there’s always someone who is more impressive. He concurred that there’s a velvet ropes kind of feeling in Manhattan, people always peering in to find someone more successful, richer, more beautiful. He also thought the geography of the city makes romance awkward. When you end a date, you say goodbye on the street or at a subway stop. You don’t get to make out in a car or a living room!

What to make of all of this?

The common theme in the complaints I heard in New York seemed to boil down to economics. That people are always looking for someone with more money. It made me reflect back on San Francisco, that people are always on a quest for a better fit, but just as often, to find  someone who’s a little more extraordinary and genius, an entrepreneur, an artist, somehow visionary and special. I remember a French guy telling me that his American friend who worked at Google felt that way, that women always wanted someone more extraordinary. That might have a ring of truth to it.

What can we do to combat the disposable dating syndrome? One word: acknowledgment. Even if you don’t have the patience or desire to get to know someone, at least you can acknowledge your date’s existence with an email, or heaven forbid, a phone call. You can not simply disappear. You can tell them one thing you liked about them even if you are not a romantic match.

I don’t claim to have all the answers, and frankly, I’m writing this final paragraph now after a year of traveling and distance from San Francisco. I’ve decided I don’t want to participate in online dating at all because of the consumer mentality that inevitably develops. But I’m open to hearing your ideas about how to lessen the brutality of the online dating game. How do you handle it if you go out with someone once and then decide it’s not a (potential) fit? Please share in the comments.

This year, I am shaking up my little world by living in Brazil and traveling elsewhere. I started a new blog to chronicle my travels . . . it’s called My Unplanned Adventure and you can check it out here.

Natalia, a quirkyalone in Florianopolis, devours SoSingular!

Santa Teresa, a hilltop neighborhood that is often compared to Montmartre in Paris for its bohemian atmosphere, rich cultural life, and (to me) intoxicating architecture is hosting an action-packed literary festival FLIST the weekend of May 15 and 16 and I am going to participate with an event to launch the Brazilian version of my book, Sósingular: Um Manifesto Para Romanticos Irredutíveis (in English, it’s Quirkyalone: A Manifesto for Uncompromising Romantics). Here’s a formal invite in English then in Portuguese! If you are nearby, please come by and be sosingular with us.

When: Sunday, May 16, 3 pm

Where: Terra Brasilis, Rua Murtinho Nobre, 156, just opposite the Parque das Ruinas

What: A book launch party for SoSingular: Um Manifesto Para Romanticos Irredutíveis. Join us to learn about the quirkyalone movement worldwide and to talk about single life in Rio. Meet other quirkyalones (or sosingulares) over cairpirinhas!

A quirkyalone is a person who enjoys being single (or spending time alone) and so prefers to wait for the right person to come along rather than dating indiscriminately; relishing equal doses of solitude and friendship; attracted to freedom and possibility.

For more information, visit quirkyalone.net.
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Quando: domingo, 16 de maio, 03:00

Onde: Terra Brasilis, Rua Murtinho Nobre, 156, em frente ao Parque das Ruinas

O quê: A festa de lançamento do livro para SoSingular: Um Manifesto Para Romanticos Irredutíveis.