07/19/22
I don’t travel alone because I just want to be alone. But since I was very little, I have wanted to see this whole world. That’s not as important to everyone as it is to me. And not everyone has the freedom that I have (unmarried, no kids, 100% remote working freelancer) to make it happen. So if I’m going to do it (and not wait till my friends are retired and risk never doing it at all), I’m at least going to have to do some traveling alone.
About once a year, I leave Atlanta and travel somewhere (usually abroad) for roughly a month, work for about three weeks of that time, and then take a week or so off to do some tourism. So far, I’ve done this in Morocco, Malta, Miami, Mexico City (not sure why I chose to knock out all those M’s first), Santa Fé, and Sicily.
I have found these trips to be positively exhilarating in the way they make me feel empowered, independent, and capable. (Read more about that here.) But yes, 1,000 times yes, I absolutely do get lonely! Every time I do another one of these digital nomad (DN) trips, I learn new ways to stave off loneliness, which helps keep my energy up (loneliness is a real energy sucker!) so I can see and do all that I planned.
Here’s my tips. Note: These tips are for DNs who plan extended stays in a single spot, during which they’ll work and have some semblance of a normal day-to-day life. These don’t necessarily apply to solo vacations.
1 - Stay in a coliving house. These are communal living situations that tend to draw other DNs (i.e. people who are working while they travel rather than backpackers and other travelers). They are typically higher end than hostels and, in my estimation, draw a crowd that skews a little older and a little more established than the hostel set – grownups. Any coliving house that I have looked at offers private rooms; most but not all offer private bathrooms; and you share a kitchen, a coworking space, and other living spaces. They are as livable and well-equipped as an AirBnB, but they come with one thing that an AirBnB doesn’t: friends!
(Pictured above left, my housemates and I on a daytrip to Ortigia, Sicily, on Saturday. Two yogis from Madison, WI, and a fashion professional turned English-teaching DN from NYC.)
If you want to know more about my experiences in coliving houses, a post on that is coming soon, and I will link to it here.
2 - Join a coworking space. This one is especially important if you are in a city that doesn’t have a coliving house. At a coworking space, you might meet people who want to hang out. (Though not always, since the members at a coworking space are usually locals with their own lives. They are not traveling and “up for anything” like you are.)
But, even if you don’t make new friends, there’s still so much value in going somewhere every day where people look at you with recognition, greet you when you come in, and ask if they will see you tomorrow. I mean come on, here at the coworking space in Sicily, there’s a silver fox who gives me a flirty smile every time he walks past my table, greets me in the morning when he comes in and bids me adieu each evening when he leaves. Now if that doesn’t take the blues away, I don’t know what will.
Seriously though, being a foreigner traveling solo can sometimes draw a lot of unwanted attention, but just as often it can make you feel invisible because you’re not “one of us.” When you join a coworking space, at least in that space, during your working hours, you are someone who belongs. You’re “one of us.”
In most coworking spaces I’ve used, the staff have been friendly and chatty. In major international cities, you also tend to find other expats at coworking spaces, with whom you’ll have a lot in common if you just chat them up.
In Mexico City, at a gorgeous expat-filled space called Coffice, I always chatted with Annie from Greenville, SC.
Yesterday, at Isola in Sicily (a coworking space inside a palace!), I met a woman from Brazil.
If you can’t find a coworking space in your area, go to the same cafe to work every day in order to try to get the same effect. But, beware, it’s not quite the same. At a coworking space, the business model is to let you come in with your laptop and stay all day. At some coffee shops, they might hate customers who do this – unless you want to get another $5 latte every hour or so.
If you are concerned about the cost of a coworking space, the day rate is usually less than you would spend buying lattes all day to secure your table in a coffee shop. In fact, many coworking spaces, though not all of them, include coffee.
Even if you are at a coliving house that has a workspace, you might still prefer to leave during the day to go to a coworking space. I’ve been at coliving houses where the workspace situation was ideal for me and some where it wasn’t.
In Malta, the coliving house was big and could house probably 20 people at full capacity. As such, the coworking room was big, too, and there were always people in there working quietly. For me, the mix of company and quiet made the perfect working environment.
Cummari, the coliving house here in Sicily, only houses 4 people max. This is a great number of people for sharing a living space and a workspace for that matter. But, since I’ve been here, only 1 of the guests has been working, and she works in her room with the door closed (because she teaches online and has to talk all day). The other people who have come through the house since I have been here have been on vacation and have not been working. So, while the coworking room at Cummari is stunningly beautiful, I've had it all to myself!
So, I’ve been going to a coworking space in order to have a place to go during the day, see more people than just the handful of guests at the house, and to have a routine (more on that below).
Also, if you’re a digital nomad, you’ve traveled all this way on your own presumably to get a slice of life. You’ll get a bigger slice in a local coworking space than you would by working from your local home.
3 - Develop a routine. This is sort of the same idea as the coworking space. Find your spot where you’ll get coffee every morning on the way to work (even if work is back at the coliving house), become a regular at a restaurant or bar (no, you don’t want to go to the same restaurant every night in this far-off place where you want to see and do as much as possible, but if you are a DN, you are probably staying in one place for more than a week or so, and you can spare the time to eat at the same place more than once). The routine will help you become a familiar face, rather than feeling invisible. It will help keep you focused when you do get a little lonely or homesick and feel unmotivated to work or sightsee. And, again, it will show you a slice of life that you won’t get if you’re never in the same place twice.
Here’s a post about my routine in Barcelona, which included working from a laundromat cafe.
4 - Schedule stuff. Of course, you’re not working all the time. You came here to see and enjoy this place. Some wide open free time is a wonderful thing, but don’t leave all your off time open if you are prone to loneliness. Don’t wait till Saturday morning, for example, to decide how you’re going to spend the day. If you’re feeling a little lonely or unmotivated, come Saturday morning, you might just stay in bed all day and later regret it. So, if you decide you’re going to check out that village about an hour away, go ahead and buy the train tickets in advance. Or get yourself tickets to a show, reservations at a restaurant, or a spot on a tour. Putting down a little money in advance will keep you accountable and, as you know, once you go do the thing you planned to do, you’re almost always glad you did.
5 - Give yourself permission to do nothing. That is, don’t schedule everything. If you chose to stay a while in this far-off place so that you could get a taste of real life, don’t forget that real life includes crashing in the evening after work some nights and binging a show. You don’t have to post that part on Instagram if you don’t want to. (I think you should though! Normalize it.) When I was in Mexico City, I took amazing day trips every weekend, but almost every weeknight, I came home from the coworking space, got into bed with a chocolate bar, and watched Casa de Las Flores on Mexican Netflix. And I loved it!
6 - Talk to strangers. Some of my best solo travel memories happened because I talk to strangers when I travel on my own. Obviously, you still have to use your judgment – especially if you’re a solo female traveler – but I have met people and had conversations that I never would have (A) If I were traveling with friends and (B) If I were afraid to talk to strangers.
Strike up a conversation with that other solo person at a restaurant, bar or tourist attraction. Ask someone for a light, for that extra napkin on their table, or directions even if you don’t need them in a play to start a conversation with a potentially interesting stranger.
If you want to know more about some of the times I’ve talked to strangers (and how it got me free desserts and a mini-tour of Paris at breakneck speed), a blog post on that is coming up soon. I’ll link to it here.
7 - Consider the time zone. My previous solo trips to Europe and similar time zones have not been quite as long as this current month in Sicily. I’ve done long stints in the Americas, where I’m in the same time zone as back home or at least within an hour or so of it. I had never considered how much that mattered. In time zones closer to home, I could pick up the phone and call my family, friends or my boyfriend just like I would at home – without thinking about it and without scheduling it.
Sicily is six hours ahead of Atlanta. It didn’t seem like a big deal when I planned this trip, but it has been. There’s been almost no spontaneous calling friends when I need to hear a familiar voice or talk to someone who knows me. Whenever the urge to talk to someone at home has struck, it’s been at a time that they’d be asleep or at work.
Last night/this morning, in Sicily, I happened to wake up in the middle of the night. I reached for my phone to see what time it was (4am here, 10pm back home) and saw that I had gotten a text from my boyfriend just a few minutes earlier. “Are you awake?” (Yes, I know that's usually the opening line to a booty call, but when you are in a far-off time zone and you get a text that asks if you're awake, well, sometimes a rose is just a rose.) I was awake now, so I turned on my lamp and FaceTimed him, knowing that if I waited till I was awake for real in a couple hours, he’d be asleep for another 6 to 8 hours and then off to start his busy day. It’s catch as catch can.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t travel solo to a far-off time zone because you’ll die of loneliness. I just suggest you think about it. The time difference isn’t nothing. And it does have consequences for the solo traveler who might (read: will definitely) get lonely sometimes.
Of course, there are workarounds. You can schedule a standing phone date with your significant other or your bestie at a time that’s mutually convenient. But when that unexpected rush of loneliness or homesickness catches you unaware, there’s a lot to be said for picking up the phone and calling a friend right then. If that’s not possible, you’ll need to have another coping mechanism at the ready.
In Sicily, a glass of rosé has often done the trick.
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