Somehow in the span of four days I've managed to ride a horse across the set of Lord of the Rings, sleep in a 19th century cottage (with running water AND flush toilets!), mountain bike through a braided river to an enchanting forest where I secretly hosted a private dance party, using up the remaining 10% of my battery, kayak to a hidden mossy waterfall/glacially cold swimming hole, compare the bioluminescent sparkle of glow worms against the backdrop of clear mountain starry night skies, eat yummy BBQed lamb and listen to fantastic acoustic songs by the fire pit (to be shared later once "Steve The Band" gets some recordings on the Internet). And all this for the price of a few hours volunteering my manual labor. In and of itself it makes me happy just because I CAN lift a shovel AND carry the ash bucket. 6 months ago I couldn't lift ten pounds off the ground let alone shovel, scrape, and scrub all day before pedaling and paddling the evening away. And to think I used to pay money for gym workouts?
How did I get so lucky? Because of the generosity of people willing to take in a random traveling stray for a few days, obviously. Less obvious, how did I get noticed by random chance? By having a beer alone at a bar without pulling out my phone to have a pathetic date with Facebook by myself. Because I'm recently inspired by what can come of being alone, I am going to attempt to write a manual in how to be alone in public places.
The most fabulous quirky little moments of my life have come about while alone. For instance, there was that Friday night back in San Francisco when I noticed that End Games improv was having a free show at StageWerx.org. I couldn't find anyone to go with so I went alone. I must have made friendly eye contact to someone in the queue to get in because someone held their hand out to introduce themselves and before I knew it, 7 or 8 other people also introduced themselves to me. We were chatting and laughing and drinking poorly concealed hipster beers that someone had brought to share. Before long, someone busted out a deck of Cards Against Humanity while we waited in line to see the show. At first, I figured all these strangers were being randomly friendly to me because it was an improv show and anything can happen in improv. Then, as people made references to others who weren't present and giggled at inside jokes, it dawned on me that this was a group of friends and and everyone in the group assumed I was a friend of someone else's in the group! Whoopsies! Oh well, accidentally making new friends is the way to go.
Aside from the realization that doing things alone is a wonderful thing that people too often miss out on, I will attempt to write my "how to be alone" guide because often there can be long stretches of uncomfortable, uncertain not-so-amazing downtime between chance improv encounters and acquisitions of volunteer jobs in Paradise. In the past, when Random Chance has gone out for a coffee break, I've satiated my discomfort of unplanned time and space and sense of purposeless by making plans so that I can tell myself "look how important I am with this stuff on my calendar". But I feel that I have acquired a few helpful tips on being alone after a month of solo travel and a lifetime of doing things alone that most people don't attempt alone (Like the time my sister found me in a puddle of tears hiding behind the bathroom door after crookedly attempting to cut my own bangs because "mom was busy so I thought I should just do it myself"...luckily mom had the sense to call in for backup (my best friend Mel who you may remember from my 24 year friendaversary post) to surprise and distract me from the resulting horror). In fact, I've done so many cool things by myself (aside from the not so cool solo haircut experience) that being alone is becoming nostalgic as if I'm visiting an old friend. As I do new cool things by myself, I'm reminiscing about "that one time when that other cool thing happened...was that ten years ago now?" This is not to say that I am always happy alone nor am always competent at being alone. The mere fact that I've needed to devise a strategy to tackle aloneness indicates that aloneness hasn't come with ease. So without further ado, how to be alone in public:
1) When eating alone at a restaurant, if you want to socialize position yourself at a restaurant where you can eat at the bar. Appear to be having a wonderful time. If you look like you are enjoying yourself, people will come talk to you just to find out what you are so damned happy about.
1a) If you don't feel happy sitting there by yourself, fake-it-till-you-make-it.
1b) If you are female and of any age and are anywhere on the spectrum of ugly-to-gorgeous, someone will come talk to you. Eventually. You might not want to talk to them, but someone will come.
2) Be polite and at least a little friendly to anyone brave enough to come talk to you even if you don't want to talk to them (unless they are creepy, then be a jerk to them). This sends the signal to others (who you may want to speak to) that you are approachable.
3) Entertain yourself by people-watching. Sadly, this will make you feel grateful to not be in one of those relationships anymore as you realize that 80% of the other tables are full of couples alone together on their smartphones 80% of the time.
And what is loneliness really? Whoever invented that word was an idiot because it seems to imply that the feeling is derived from being by oneself. This is completely wrong and misleading. The feeling called "loneliness" is caused by being with people you think you should be connecting with but aren't (or admittedly by being by yourself when you think you should be with other people). Loneliness essentially= your expectations + other people not living up to them. The presence of other people or lack thereof is completely irrelevant to the process of becoming lonely. Being by myself is consistently and reliably the least lonely place I can think of. Maybe "loneliness" should be replaced with the word "crowdiness".
3a) My favorite new people watching technique is to watch people's feet (best done when sitting in the grass next to a busy footpath). You can tell a lot about a group of people just by noticing who aims their feet toward whom and who appears to be leading, etc. For bonus points you can make up interesting stories about how these passive and dominant feet owners know one another.
4) Contrary to popular belief, this technique is unnecessary to meeting strangers, but it is also useful: talk to strangers. The key to this is to say "hello" right away rather than waiting 20 minutes to then awkwardly acknowledge the other person. I did this with fantastic results in a Queenstown bar the other day! I sort of made a snarky comment to this group of blokey 50-something year old guys who were heckling the acoustic cover guitarist. Before I knew it, I was swooped into their vortex along with a few others who joined the conversation. This one man kept mentioning that I needed to look out for the 50-ish American Floridian woman who was bopping to the music from her chair. "You've gotta watch out for those American women." And "she's your kind" and "keep an eye on her." He kept telling me of mz. Florida. Catching on that he had an eye for her, I waited until the headlining band got started with a good dance song. Without thinking it through, I lept across the room, grabbed her hands and danced her back across the room until I was in arms reach of the guy. Then I pulled a sneaky maneuver that involved putting his hand in hers and sitting down in one smooth motion. The whole thing proceeded to erupt into a pub dance party for the rest of the night. Even the lead singer commented over the mic that he thought my technique was pretty clever. (And yes, "How To Start A Dance Party" was an alternate title for this post).
The spontaneous dance party thing might not have happened if I'd not been alone. Other people often find me embarrassing when I interact with strangers. For example, there was the time when my friend Rebz and our late friend Marc dared me to talk to this very out of place reality TV star-esk chick among flannel shirt-wearing San Franciscans at an after work happy hour. But when I stood up to actually do it they were both so embarrassed that they ran away giggling! Oh Marc, I hope you are getting to enjoy a slice of my travels from wherever you are. If you can read this, I have a sheep joke for you that I learned from a bus driver: Why did the kiwis cross-breed their sheep with Aussie kangaroos?...so they could have wooly jumpers!!! (Hint: a jumper=a sweater).
5) If nothing cool unfolds while being alone, keep yourself entertained by writing blog posts about being alone.
No comments:
Post a Comment