Quirkyalone

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.

I was on a plane ride recently reading an in-flight magazine, where we got the chance to read five guys’ “real” opinions on Valentine’s Day. These poor husbands and boyfriends felt so oppressed! The words “Happy Valentine’s Day” in the morning filled them with dread as they would have to be romantic on demand.

The saccharine-sweet quality of Valentine’s Day, that fills us with expectation and often tends to make us feel disappointed whether we are single or in a relationship, struck me 8 years when I launched International Quirkyalone Day with parties in four cities. The flagship party was in San Francisco. In our second year, the party got so big the fire marshalls came but then they wanted to party too.

IQD is for everyone, because couples as well as singles needed a liberating alternative holiday to celebrate the joys of connection: to yourself, to your mate (if you have one), to friends, family, passions, and so on.

International Quirkyalone Day marches on! I am astounded that it has been celebrated in so many cities (40). This year I have been more engrossed in my own personal adventures, wrapping up my travels in South America, so I haven’t thrown a quirkyalone day party the way I have in years past.

But I take this opportunity to wish all of you the most alive and fresh Quirkyalone Day ever! I invite you to do something new Quirkyalone Day, shake up your world a bit by visiting a new spot in or outside your town, take a class, take a chance and make a new friend (and I don’t mean on Facebook). Rearrange your furniture, try a new recipe, dance alone in your underwear for an hour. At the least, buy yourself some daisies, chosen for their natural, sunny quality, they are the official flower of the quirkyalone movement.

And above all, love thyself.

Here is a video from Keith Olbermann’s Countdown in MSNBC (RIP) featuring the 2005 IQD party in San Francisco and interviews with yours truly about this new holiday:

The American holiday Thanksgiving is approaching, and with it, millions of families (and urban tribes like mine, pictured above) will gather to gobble down turkey and sweet potatoes with marshmallows baked on top. Many of them will also go around the table to share what they are grateful for in their lives. This ritual has always been my favorite part of Thanksgiving. In a consumer-driven society where we are so often complaining about what’s not quite right with our lives, it feels great to hear people acknowledge their personal abundance.

This year, I have been thinking that I am grateful for still being single, which, honestly is not what I would have said last year. I took this year off to travel and I did the journey alone. I’ve grown in many ways that would not have been possible had I found a lifelong partner before I bought the ticket and made the final decision to go. I’m sure I would be grateful for that person, had we met. But I am also very grateful that I took full advantage of being single this year instead of hanging around San Francisco with the agenda of finding a mate (which honestly, was getting kind of boring–more on that in another post).

So this leads me to thinking about reasons to be grateful for being single this Thanksgiving. This year, let us count the ways. (Add yours in the comments.)

First and foremost, you are alive. Single. Just as you came out of the womb. Being single is the starting point for life, and we will in a sense be single when we pass on. So be grateful for your singular existence now, that you are alive!

The time to discover what makes you happy A relationship can be very time-consuming. When you are single, you have all your free time outside of work and other obligations to discover what brings you joy. Use it and be grateful for it! Being single gives you the opportunity to create more joy in your life without depending on someone else to provide it for you.

Freedom to travel and explore alone I took this year off to travel alone in South America and I’ve had the ability to grow and learn in a way that might or might not have been possible if I had been coupled. (You can still travel alone when you are quirkytogether, but it would be hard to travel alone for a whole year.)

You haven’t settled! No relationship or person will be perfect. But many people are afraid of being single and stay in relationships that are not working in order to avoid the pain of breaking up or being alone. Every person is a little bit wrong, being single means you are free to go out and find someone who is wrong for you in all the right ways.

Finally, total freedom to indulge your secret single behavior Want to pick your toe nails while watching Seinfeld reruns on a Friday night? Eat peas out of a can? No problem, you are single! Embrace your SSB (covered more extensively in Quirkyalone.)

Count your blessings my (single) quirkyalone friends.

Share your reasons for being grateful that you are single at this stage of your life in the comments.