What I Learned in 2023: The Source of My Happiness Is Inside Myself

Atlanta, GA
12/31/23

At first, I wasn’t going to write this. Or at least I wasn’t going to publish it. It felt tone deaf, insensitive or maybe even obnoxious to write about the great year I’ve had when, globally, it’s been a pretty shitty one. As I write this, wars in Gaza and Ukraine rage on, and that’s hardly an exhaustive list of the human suffering happening right now. While life is so difficult for so many, it felt wrong to share how good it’s been for me.

But then I read the following in a blog post written by someone I had recently interviewed for a story in my ongoing coverage of psychedelic medicine: “Joy is an emotion we suppress far too often.” I knew that by avoiding writing about what this year has been like for me, I was suppressing joy. And, true to my usual form, I wanted to sweep my joy under the rug because I felt guilty about it.

But now I’ll come out and say it, 2023 was the best year of my entire life.

First, I realized a dream that I’d had and been deferring for 30 years. I was 17 years old the first time I started dreaming of a trip to Japan. I was 47 when I got there – the last leg of a 10-week journey through Asia. Of course, that trip took up less than 20% of the year that I’m calling the best one of my entire life, but what a weight to take something off of your to-do list that has been languishing there for so long mostly because you were afraid to do it.

And fear wasn’t the only thing holding me back, which is another reason that blog post about suppressing joy spoke to me. He wrote, “Why do you withhold joy from yourself? …Why do we deny ourselves some of the most beautiful emotions and experiences provided to us in this beautiful Universe?”

I can tell you why I do it: Again, it's guilt. Every time I deferred that Asia trip over the last 30 years was because of guilt. Sometimes it was towards my family who might need me. Other times, it was towards a boyfriend at the time, who’d be left behind.

So I started 2023 with a resolution, “No boyfriends till you go to SE Asia.” The short version of the story is that I managed to keep that resolution. You can read the longer version here.

How I started 2023 without a boyfriend was because of a fantasy I’d had and deferred for 30 years. From September 2021 to August 2022, I was in a relationship with a man I had idealized since I was 16. He had been my boyfriend in high school, and we just never quite moved on. Through marriages (both of ours), children (his), and multiple moves to different cities and countries, we never forgot about each other and both, each in our own way, harbored a fantasy of ending up back together one day. In 2021, we finally did, and 11 months later, it ended in colossal heartbreak for me.

But again, what a joy (an eventual joy, haha) to release the weight of something you’ve wanted for 30 years. And, my god, what an invaluable life lesson it taught me. (But MY GOD was I really not smart enough to have known this already?! Geez!) The lesson: When you idealize a human being, you won’t see any of their flaws, and we are all flawed. None of us is ideal.

Nothing about this man looked good on paper. Literally everything was a red flag. When I say everything, I mean everything. Had I met him online or in a social setting as a perfect stranger and learned the things I learned about him, I never would have pursued a relationship with him. There was nothing about him or his current situation that made him an eligible candidate to be a boyfriend. And, to his credit, he told me this on many occasions (while sometimes simultaneously plowing ahead with our relationship, occasionally at lightspeed). When you idealize a person, you can find an explanation for everything. That part wasn’t his fault. It was mine.

I hope that 2022 was the last time I had to learn the lesson I first heard from Maya Angelou in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: “When someone tells you who they are, believe them.” Ignoring that advice has been my entree into far too many relationships.

Instead, I was living the lines from Fleishman Is In Trouble, a book and later a mini-series about, in part, a sad-sack divorced dad who finds acceptance among his old friends from high school.

“It had been so long since he felt accepted, like he didn’t have to justify his existence, that people just took him on his own terms. Maybe this was the key – to spend time with people who knew you when you were all potential. Maybe, in some way, you remained all potential to them. Your mistakes were anomalies to them.”

Yes, all I saw when I looked at this man was potential. All his mistakes were anomalies to me.

It took getting over that first 30-year-old fantasy in 2022 to realize my 30-year-old dream in 2023.

I spent the first quarter of 2023 planning that trip – an exercise in courage. Hitting “submit,” “send,” “purchase,” “book” on piece after piece of that journey, feeling my belly go cold every time I booked another flight, another boat, another room, and then doing it again and again until there was no turning back. But I was scared until I got on the plane, all nerves and jitters, which only escalated as my departure drew nearer.

But within about 24 hours of landing in Chiang Mai, where I stayed for the first month of my trip, all that fear was replaced by bliss. I was safe, I was fine, and goddammit I had done the thing.

Over the course of those 10 weeks, I came to realize, and eventually started saying out loud, “I have never been happier in all my life.”

That bliss came first from being in true alignment with what I have long felt to be my highest calling: to see as much of this world as I can while I’m in it. It was a bliss that I feel every time I get back out there. I felt it when I moved to Brazil and on every subsequent visit, and I’ve felt it on solo trips to Malta, Sicily, Mexico, New Mexico and so on.

But on this last trip, the bliss was so much bigger. I mean, I felt like I was on something (and I was, but more on that later**). Part of the outsized bliss was the dopamine cascade I felt every time I packed my little carry-on for the next destination: an island in the southern gulf of Thailand, Bangkok, Singapore, Cambodia, numerous stops in Vietnam, and that many more in Japan. What a rush it was every few days to few weeks when I said, “Tomorrow I’m going somewhere new!” I confess, I was afraid I’d gotten addicted to this feeling and that I’d surely broken my brain’s internal reward system to a point that once I got back to Atlanta, I might never feel joy again. And, boy, doesn’t this speak volumes about our tendency to suppress or deny ourselves joy. I literally thought that if I kept getting so much of it, I might break my brain. I think some religions may say something similar about sex or masturbation, too, but I digress.

That bliss was also so all-encompassing, I was certain, because it was the first time I’d had the chance to learn that I could be completely happy all by myself. All the happiness I needed was waiting inside of me and I didn’t need a man to unlock it.

That awareness has brought me an enduring joy (that I refuse to suppress!) that far outlasted the trip. It has lasted me the whole year. And I made a bet that it would.

**During the colossal heartbreak of 2022, I started taking the antidepressant Wellbutrin. It worked wonders for me. I will be happy to elaborate on that with anyone who asks. There is no shame in needing that kind of help. When I started the medicine, in August 2022, I told my doctor I didn’t want to be on this for the rest of my life and that I didn’t think I’d need to be either. He agreed and promised to help me and support me in going off of it whenever I was ready.

Taking that pill every morning in Thailand and Vietnam eventually started to feel silly. Come on, I was on top of the world! So I wondered if it might be time to taper off. But I’m no dummy. I had to ask myself, is it this trip that’s got you feeling so great or is it these pills? Will you still be the happiest you’ve ever been in your whole life when you stop taking the pills? And if it’s the travel that’s got you so high, won’t you crash as soon as you get home?

As unlikely as it might have seemed, I decided that I really was just this happy and that I was going to stay this way. Halfway through my 10-week trip, at the bathroom sink of my hotel room in Central Vietnam, I decided to skip my pill that day. As my doctor directed, I dropped down to a pill every other day, then every third day, then every fourth, then once a week, until I took my last pill in Japan, the last week of my trip.

I still felt great, but the true test would be when I was both back to my old mundane life in Atlanta and also no longer taking happy pills.

When I first got home, in July, every time I reunited with people I hadn’t seen in 2.5 months – my family, my girlfriends, my running group, work colleagues – they all said the same thing. “You look different.” “You’re glowing.” “I’ve never seen you so happy.” And I’d respond honestly, “I am different.” “Yes, I think you’re right.” “I’ve never been so happy.”

Now, six months later, on the last day of 2023, the tan from Vietnam’s perpetual June sun has worn off, but, whether or not others can still see it, I do still feel the glow. That somehow didn’t fade. Nor did the newfound certainty that I am courageous and capable and that the source of my happiness was always inside me.

The Things You Learn When It's Only You (or Love Letter to the Rice Paddy)

Hoi An, Vietnam
07/04/2023

At the risk of embodying every cliche about Westerners who spend months traveling around SE Asia, I must say, I have learned so much about myself on this trip. When you remove yourself from your usual context, take yourself away from your typical backdrop and send all the other cast members off stage, all that’s left is you. Not you as you relate to where you live, what you do, or who you spend your time with. Just the barest, purest you. And when it’s only you, you can’t help but see who you really are.

Here's just a few of the things I've seen.

That man was clearly not right for me.

All it took was a little bit of distance – ok, 8,795 miles – to see perfectly clearly that the man I wanted to make it work with back at home was not right for me in any way. He told me he feared he could never make me happy. He pointed out a few incompatibilities and I had already identified some others on my own. Yet I insisted to myself and to him that we would never really know until we tried. But I did know. I had already had some iteration of the relationship that I was about to have with him with two other people before him and those didn’t work, so why would this? And why did I want to do it all over? This – that a relationship with a divorced dad who lives in another state wouldn’t work – wasn’t really a new thing that I was learning about myself though. The new thing was that I always try so hard to make things work when there is often very little basis for it. How often, I wonder, has it been at the cost of something else that actually would work?

Yes, I am a city person.

One of the incompatibilities he cited was that I could only be happy in a city and that he never wanted to live in one. In the spirit of trying to make things work when there is very little basis for it, I insisted that I didn’t know what other kinds of places would make me happy because I had only ever lived in cities and that I would never know until I tried. And that is true (as I have learned on this trip! Read on.), but it is also true that I was built for the city.

I didn’t really connect with Chiang Mai, and I knew that it was because it was slow. Though it’s the second biggest city in Thailand, it doesn’t have a city’s energy nor its skyline. It felt like a sleepy town without any of the charm that typically comes with that label. I was restless there and ended up traveling outside the city more often than I had planned and staying away longer than I had planned. I enjoyed myself more in even smaller, slower places, including islands and tiny villages, that had more natural beauty and more charm and, yes, I also enjoyed myself more in bigger cities.

After a few weeks in Chiang Mai, I visited Singapore. When the taxi carried me away from the airport and down the highway and I saw the first signs of the city, I felt as if my whole body sighed. It was a feeling I knew well. One that I had felt on arrival in other cities around the world.

And I said to myself, and partly to him in a conversation happening only in my head, Yes, I am a city person. And I wondered why I had tried to deny it. Here was this person who really saw me, trying to save us both a lot of heartache, and I was trying to convince him that he was wrong.

During those three days in Singapore, I was positively revitalized. I strode around the city like the New Yorker that I have been since before I ever set foot in New York. It felt like I’d been given pure oxygen. And though I had been completely blissed out on travel and newness from the moment the plane landed in Korea three weeks prior, I hadn’t yet felt this vibrant.

But, my god, do I love the rice paddy!

But what I said was true: I didn’t know what other kinds of places could make me happy because I had never experienced them. I think when I said that to him, I wasn’t sure that it was true. But I have learned here in Hoi An that it is. Since I have been in Vietnam, I have spent time in what seems like every type of geography, and it has been some of the most beautiful that I have ever seen: beach, jungle, river, bay, mountains – both the kinds of mountains that I had seen before and also stunning limestone tower karst that look like they came from the pages of a fairytale. Each has been jaw-droppingly gorgeous. But none has had the impact on me that these last two weeks in the rice paddy have.

I’ve been fortunate enough to be in a hotel on the rice paddy with a balcony off my room that overlooks it and also in a coworking space that is essentially a glass box on the rice paddy – nothing but green, the brightest, most vibrant green, for as far as you can see on three sides of the building. While Hoi An also has beaches, a river, and a city within its borders, I’ve barely spent any time in any of these because I simply cannot get enough of the rice paddy. When I’m not breathing it in from my balcony at the hotel or soaking it in from the co-working space, I’m aimlessly riding my bike through it for hours in the mornings or the evenings.

The rice paddy goes on for I don’t know how far – further than I’ve ever ridden my bike on these hours-long aimless sojourns. It’s broken up into giant blocks. Flat roads run through the paddy, across these blocks, and you can watch bikes, scooters and the occasional 4-wheeled vehicle cross the paddy all day. Very narrow alleys crowded with simple farm houses, cafes, restaurants, convenience stores and small inns form the boundaries around each block of paddy. Cars won’t fit in these alleys. When they dare, they have to back out or go around the whole perimeter of the paddy in order to exit. It’s best to drive onto the paddy on a two-wheeled vehicle. That’s why, staying here, I’ve finally gotten over my fear of taking motorbike taxis. It’s the only way to get picked up and dropped off at my door. Otherwise I’d have to walk to the main road to meet a regular taxi.

It’s a good ten degrees cooler on the rice paddy than it is anywhere else. And the near-constant breeze brings with it a fragrance that I never knew existed but that I’m sure I will unsuccessfully try to find or replicate once I get back home. The air around the rice paddy is steamy, nutty and just a little bit sweet. It smells, not surprisingly, like a soupy pot of brown rice that’s been sprinkled with just a touch of sugar.

When I do pry myself away from the rice paddy to spend an evening in town or at a restaurant on the river or the beach, I notice something that happens every time I return. I’m on the back of the motorbike, zipping through the streets of Hoi An – bright lights overhead; the incessant buzz of horns that drivers use to indicate that they will continue through an intersection so make way; cars, other bikes, motorcycles, and scooters all around. Sometimes my knee grazes the knee of the passenger on the motorbike stopped at the light next to us. There’s stimulation everywhere. Then suddenly, as if there were a blackout, it’s all gone. We are out of the chaos as we turn onto a narrow alley that leads to the rice paddy. Barely lit, the tiny street is dark and typically silent save for the bark of a dog or the crow of a rooster. The alleys are so tight, and so crowded with little structures, that I can’t see what’s ahead, just the buildings right next to me. We turn sharply through the tiny grid until suddenly, as if we’ve come tumbling down a chute, we are on the wide open rice paddy. The breeze rushes over me and brings with it that sweet nutty smell. And every time this happens, it’s as if my whole body sighs.

Untethered and Never Better

Ninh Binh, Vietnam
06/19/2023

I made a New Year’s resolution in 2023: No boyfriends till you go to southeast Asia.

A trip to Asia had been a dream of mine since I was in high school. Over the years, what I envisioned got more specific to eventually become three months spent living, working and traveling throughout southeast Asia. Relationships have caused me to backburner this trip more times than I know.

I’ve never specifically said, “I can’t spend three months in SE Asia. I have a boyfriend.” But having a boyfriend has always made it very easy for me to come up with other reasons as to why now wasn’t the time or this wasn’t the year. It’s always been very easy for me to give up things that I want and pieces of myself for other people, whether they ask me to or not. In the end, I wasn’t going to SE Asia because I didn’t want to manage the (mostly self-imposed) relationship-guilt and anxiety that I knew I would battle every day of such a long and faraway trip.

Though there were some plot twists, some moments when it was looking like I wasn’t going to pull it off, I did manage to narrowly escape the US without having a boyfriend.

And, friends, it has been a revelation.

I already knew that I experienced a lot of relationship anxiety during my solo travels. Feeling guilty for leaving them behind; worrying about whether I should check in more; feeling bad about being so in-their-face about what a great time I was having; feeling bad for having such a great time in the first place. But what I didn’t realize was that all of the anxiety I experienced while traveling, not just the stuff that was obviously about a boyfriend, was tied to my relationship. It’s the only explanation I have for what’s different now.

On every solo trip that I’ve taken, there’s been at least one moment on the trip when I have absolutely and irrationally fallen completely apart over something very small.

The example that always comes to mind was in Rabat, Morocco, when I couldn’t find milk. Every other day or so, I’d buy a small carton of milk (the only size available) for my coffee from the “store” next door. “Store” means the next-door-neighbor’s kitchen window out of which he sold basic staples. But one day he wasn't there. I texted my host, who was at work, to ask where else I could get milk. He explained where the closest place was, but I couldn’t find it. I suspect I just didn’t walk far enough, but after walking for a while and not finding it, I was overcome with a crippling and mostly irrational fear that if I kept going, I wouldn’t be able to find my way back. It wasn’t completely irrational. I was staying in a medina – a medieval walled, maze-like part of the city. But still. I was absolutely panicking — about the prospect of drinking my coffee black that day and about possibly getting lost. Soon, I was near tears and it wasn’t about milk anymore. I was cursing myself for being so stubborn and insisting on going to all these crazy places by myself, and then I was upset about being lonely, and then I was upset about being such a fraidy cat who wouldn’t find the store because she was afraid of getting lost in the medina (a fraidy cat who travels the world all by herself, mind you), and I just continued to unravel from there.

There has been at least one incident like this on every solo trip.

The triggering event is always something trivial, and it always devolves into “What the hell are you even doing here? You are all by yourself. Who do you think you are?”

Let me be clear: When I travel, 95% of the time is incalculable bliss. It’s why I take these big trips again and again and will continue to for as long as I am able. This is the thing that makes my soul sing, and when I am not traveling, it is the thing that keeps me awake at night. But there were always these bumps in the road on the journey that I had just chalked up to a fact of solo travel.

In fact, before this trip, I talked about these meltdowns with an advisor of mine, who has always been very supportive and encouraging of this trip over the years. She suggested I fill out a worksheet titled “Coping Ahead,” in which I would make a plan in advance for how I was going to handle the inevitable meltdown when it came.

But it hasn’t come.

I haven’t overreacted to any minor setbacks. I haven’t been afraid of anything – except of getting hit by a car in Hanoi, which I think is a totally rational fear that is actually helping keep me alive. I haven’t been lonely or gotten tired of being alone. And nothing has led me to say to myself, “What are you doing here all by yourself? Why did you think this was a good idea? Who do you think you are?”

In fact, who I think I am is a badass, and I have celebrated being here all by myself from the moment I arrived.

My flight over here was scheduled to land in Chiang Mai at 10pm on a Sunday. I’d arrive at my lodging long after the staff had gone home, so I’d have to let myself in and find my room on my own, based on an instructional video they’d sent, showing me how to get in through the side door and the various keypads in which I’d enter my access code. I’d do this after dark in a strange foreign city that I actually didn’t know much about. I knew it wasn’t a big city though. I knew it was highly likely that the street would be deserted when the taxi driver dropped me off – and it was. I suspected that my first meltdown might take place at some point in this arrival sequence.

Before flying out of Atlanta, I checked in with a Facebook group of female expats who live in Chiang Mai. I told them all of the above and asked them whether this whole plan was safe. They assured me it would be safe and easy.

So I got into a taxi at the airport with the non-English speaking driver. I typed my destination into his phone and placed it and my fate in his hands. As we made our way down a street that was completely unknown to me, along a moat, and through an archway into the Old City, I said to myself, “Damn! I am brave!” And I couldn’t help but grin – a wide, open-mouthed grin – at all I had undertaken to get myself there and that I had done it all by myself, not fearlessly – there had been a lot of fear and anxiety leading up to my departure – but in spite of my fear. “Damn, Sonya!” I said to myself in the back of the taxi.

So far on this trip, I have taken 12 flights between 4 countries and 8 cities - and I still have 1 month, 3 more flights and 1 more country to go. Getting in and out of each country has been a major undertaking. There were visas for several of the countries. Shot records. Letters from my doctor explaining the more-than-30-day supply of prescription drugs in my suitcase in the unlikely event my bag was searched. Proof of onward travel out of each country that required a visa. So much research, planning and work. And so many opportunities to have a meltdown.

But I don’t know what words could make clear just how perfectly happy and at ease I have felt for every minute of this trip. I attribute it to being untethered.

I think that on those other trips, when I had someone to worry about back home, I was so tied up in anxious, guilty knots all the time about traveling without them that all it took was an empty milk carton to push me over the edge. Because, arguably, this should be my hardest trip yet. I’ve never gone so far, for so long, to such a far-away time zone, and to countries so different from my own.

But everything has felt simple, easy and completely amazing. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever been happier in all my life than I am right now.

There was a period in my 30s – after my divorce and before I met the next person that I would have a long-term relationship with – when all I wanted was a boyfriend. I was so unhappily single that my sister, trying to show me the bright side, suggested I make plans to do all the things I wanted that might not be as easy to do if I were in a relationship. But my laser focus on finding a partner made me blind to any other desires. I couldn’t conjure up a single thing I might like to do in the meantime. It never occurred to me that that would have been the perfect time to travel. All of life was on hold until I had a boyfriend.

And then when I got a boyfriend, I put my life on hold again.

If I could get a message to my younger self, I’d say, Live your life. Do the things that you want to do. The things that make your soul sing. Do them now. Partners come and go. Even that partner that I was desperately seeking in my mid-30s, I found him, and we stayed together for eight years. But we’re not together anymore. You’re only in one relationship that will never end. There’s only one person that you will never be rid of and that’s yourself. That’s who you owe something to.

The Ritual of the Monks

Chiang Mai, Thailand
06/02/23

Though the monks are beyond plentiful here in Chiang Mai, every time I see one, walking barefoot and gazing forward in a meditative state, I behave as if it’s a rare animal sighting. Like when you see a deer in your backyard in the city. You’re standing at the sink, washing the dishes after dinner like normal, and then you see something move, or you see the shine of his eyes. And you freeze. Maybe you whisper to your partner, “Honey! There’s a deer,” and you both creep closer to the window, like burglars in a movie, to get a closer look.

That's me every single time I see a monk here in Thailand.

The first few days here, I got a kick out of seeing them doing everyday things that we all do. The stuff that you could caption “Monks – They’re just like us!”

I saw a monk riding on the back of a motor scooter, his bare feet on the foot rests, his burgundy robe tucked up under him, his hands gripping the seat behind him.

I saw one paying for a basket full of toiletries at the cosmetics store where I, too, was filling a basket with toiletries.

Walking back to my place a few weeks ago, I managed to steal a few shots of these novice monks (pictured right), four boys who’d just gotten out of school, ordering cold drinks at the coffee shop next door.

One afternoon, while exploring a temple I especially like, I saw several teenage monks pruning and watering the shrubs when a garden hose fight broke out. One sprayed another relentlessly until finally, the victim’s robe was soaked from the waste down. He hiked it up almost to his hips and carried the wet drape as he walked back towards the living quarters with his legs a couple extra feet apart.

After having seen all of this "normal human behavior," a week or so into my time in Thailand, I saw monks engaged in a ritual that was not at all “just like us.” It was 6:30 a.m., and I was on the little dead-end street of food stalls where I get my coffee every morning. I was a little later than usual (yes, thanks to the rooster outside my window, who starts up at 4:30am, and the lingering jet lag, I am a very early riser here in Thailand – early even for me!), which may explain why I hadn’t witnessed this ritual before.

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Two young monks, probably teenagers, came down the street towards the food stalls, each carrying a large empty silver bowl. Like the other monks I'd seen, they looked forward intently and not all around them as they walked. They went stall to stall and waited until someone emerged with food and placed it in one of the bowls. When those were full, the food went into the cloth bags they carried on their shoulders. At some of the stalls, the food vendor knelt at the feet of the monks, who chanted over the food for a moment and then moved on to the next stall. I stood and watched for a few minutes as they repeated this process.

Heading back to my place, I turned back onto the main road, where I saw several pairs of young monks making rounds with empty silver bowls.

When I got back inside, I Googled and found that Buddhist monks in Thailand and much of Southeast Asia only eat what is given to them. They can’t engage in the labor of growing or preparing food. Alms gathering allows for this. It also aligns with their practice of not having any possessions. And it allows laypeople the opportunity to improve their karma – a practice called “making merit.”

Now, nearly four weeks into my stint here, the alms-gathering monks are a part of the landscape on my morning walk, and I am a little less prone to act like I’ve seen a unicorn when I pass one. I’ve also come to see that not all the monks are stoics who stare straight ahead when they pass another person on the street.

Some break the fourth wall and let me in – the thing that I relish the most about foreign travel. When I nod at them with a small smile, they nod back. They respond sawasdee khap (how a man say’s hello) to my sawasdee kha. And one morning, during his alms gathering with a much older monk, a little boy monk – he couldn’t have been more than 8 years old – caught my eye and grinned at me all the way down the block. He turned his head as far as he could to keep me in his sight. And I held his gaze with my own smiling eyes for as long as we were able.

Why I Slow Travel

Chiang Mai, Thailand
05/29/23

On my long solo trips abroad, I pick a base in one spot and take side trips from there. I leave my stuff behind and go back after every trip. I did it this way in Catania (Sicily), Mexico City, and now in Chiang Mai, a medium-sized city of about 1.2 million people in the northern mountains of Thailand.

I stay at a “coliving” (pictured right) – a dwelling that includes living and working spaces for solo travelers doing their jobs remotely (aka “digital nomads"). Colivings have not only everything you need to live and work comfortably but they also come with an instant community (See below).

Since I’ve been here, I’ve done side trips to Mae Kampong, a small village about a 2-hour drive north of here; to Koh Samui, an island in the southern Gulf of Thailand about a 2-hour flight from here; and to Singapore, a 3-hour flight. After each trip, I’ve come back to Chiang Mai. This weekend, I’ll leave for the last time and head to Bangkok.

Some people ask, "Why would you go all the way to Thailand to spend so much time in that one place? Why wouldn’t you see everything you possibly can?"

I do it for practical reasons and also for some more abstract ones that explain why I love this style of travel so much.

Packing up and moving every single week for several months; carrying all of my things with me; getting settled into a new place and getting the lay of the land; finding a suitable place to work that is comfortable, quiet, has reliable wifi and is not a stuffy hotel room – all of that is a total time suck and will completely burn you out.

It may sound more efficient to just move from point A to Z in a linear fashion across all the ground you want to cover, but when you consider the lost productivity on the days you need to work, it’s much less efficient.

With a home base, I take only the things I need on my side trips. I enjoy seeing the new place without any need to scout out a cafe to work from that week or the need to do any other chores related to my weekly routine. Back at my base, I already have a reliable place to work; I know which coffee shops open early enough for me to get some fuel before I start my day; and I know just where to grab lunch.

I can take trips to new and exciting places every weekend and enjoy a slower pace in an increasingly familiar place during the week.

But there’s so much more to it than this.

Today, I came back to Chiang Mai after a 3-night trip to Singapore. It was mid-afternoon and the co-working space, which you have to walk through to get to the bedrooms upstairs, was at peak capacity. As soon as I dragged my carry-on through the door, AP (below) – a cool, young Thai woman who works at the front desk – jumped out of her seat and rushed over to hug me.

“You’re back!” she said. “I missed you!”

What a gift to be “all by myself” nearly halfway around the globe and to have just one person to welcome me back when I walk through the front door; just one person to notice I’m gone, miss me and care that I'm back. That wouldn’t happen if I just kept traveling from A to B to C. Every departure would be a goodbye.

And it’s not just one person – There's the lady I buy my coffee from every morning (below with her husband). When I showed back up at her shop after 4 days away earlier this month, she clapped her hands together in front of her face and said, “Susan! I thought you left!” (Sure, that’s not my name, but for a welcome like that, I'll lean in.)

When you have a base, you can have a routine, and through routine, people know your face and notice when they haven’t seen it.

One part of my routine has been daily tai chi and qigong classes at a studio about a 10-minute walk from where I’m staying. On the way to class one day, I stopped into a pharmacy for sunscreen and shampoo. The pharmacist has greeted me every time I've passed since then.

In the second week of class, I met Neta, a solo traveler from Israel. We hit it off as soon as we started chatting that first day. Sure, we might have had a nice conversation if I had just seen her once and then never again. But we ended up having lunch together every day after class. She had just come from Vietnam, where I am headed next. She gave me all kinds of intel that prompted me to make major changes to my itinerary. And she’s joining me on a 3-day trip to Cambodia early next month!

I connected with Priya, a solo traveler from India, through a Facebook group for female digital nomads where we learned we’d be in Chiang Mai at the same time. She was diligent about meeting up once we got here. Together, we agreed the nearby jazz club was going to be our spot during our time here. For the two weeks that we overlapped, she was the friend that I could text to say, “Want to get dinner tomorrow?” – the kind of friend you really miss having when you’re traveling on your own, never stopping for more than a few days in each place.

Claire, an Atlanta native, has taught at an international school here in Chiang Mai for about five years. A mutual friend in Atlanta connected us. I thought she might just get together with me once to be nice, but after that first dinner, she mentioned other places she wanted to show me the next time we got together. She’s been the friend that I can text with questions about Chiang Mai. And, because I also taught abroad for a few years after college and, like her, picked up the language in my chosen country with relative ease, we have so much in common and so much to talk about.

Brayden moved into the coliving about a week after I did. I saw him come in, but he didn’t see me. Later that night, I was sitting by myself at a restaurant nearby and he walked in by himself. I said, “Are you Brayden? I’m staying at the same place as you.” A New Yorker, he reminds me of so many of my friends from college. He feels familiar.

These relationships came from three weeks in Chiang Mai. And none came at the cost of seeing new places or experiencing new things. I’m not experiencing less because I’ve decided to stay longer in one place. Sure, if I were to plan a perfectly linear trip, and spend each week in a different place as I propel myself forward across SE Asia, I would see a greater number of new places. But living in one place in Thailand (and then another next month in Vietnam) for several weeks is pretty new, too. When, on a week’s vacation, do you get the opportunity to learn what it might be like to live there? To learn the rhythms and routines of the place?

I see all the main attractions in every place I visit, but I also get to see the monks in orange robes set out with giant silver bowls every morning to collect food donations from local shops; teenage girls in school uniforms race home on motor scooters every afternoon; the old folks at the bodega next door sit down for dinner together at a table on the sidewalk every night.

And I get to see people who are happy to see me.

The Do-Over (or The Bells on the Piazza)

Florence, Italy
01/03/23
Shortly after I wrote these tips for solo travelers last year, I learned another important piece of travel advice for those going it alone: Know when to call it quits.

Last summer, my three-week live-work stint in Sicily was supposed to culminate in a 9-day vacation/whiplash tour of Italy with stops in Naples, Positano, Florence and Rome. But relationship trouble had been brewing back home all summer and by the time I headed to Italy’s mainland, I was nursing a badly broken heart.

I had gone out of my way to pack light for that month-plus in Europe. I was so proud that I’d brought nothing but a carry-on containing “5 easy pieces,” as a friend of mine had dubbed the capsule wardrobe I created for myself. I’d move through my total of 5 stops unencumbered, with such ease!

But by that third week in July, checked bag or not, I was physically heavy. Movement at all felt insurmountable.

I made it to Naples, where I dragged myself through a day trip to Pompeii, only to fight tears all day and not care one lick what the tour guide was saying. I didn’t want to cast that veil of sadness over all my would-be memories of Florence and Rome, too. I imagined that every time I saw an image of Florence or Rome in the future, I’d only remember how broken I’d felt when I was in those places. So I packed it in. Changed my ticket. And went home.

And I am so glad that I did.

It would have been completely within my nature to have said, No, Sonya. Be strong. You can do this. Don’t let a man ruin your trip. But, in fact, by going home, I didn’t let him ruin my trip.

I didn’t have any room in my heart for the expansive joy that travel brings me.

Now, five months later, I am back in Italy to complete that leg of the trip that I didn’t do back in July. And the first source of travel joy for me was the simple feeling of empowerment I got from coming back here to do this.

When I travel, the most joyful moments are usually small, unremarkable ones. The ones I can’t photograph. Sure, standing face to face (or more like face to kneecap) with Michaelangelo’s David was a weighty moment, but the one I’ll remember most will be this one: striding across the Piazza del Duomo at 8am, before it filled with tourists, precisely when the church bells started to ring. At this moment, the bells weren’t a spectacle for outsiders (except for me), but just the sound of the start of another day in Florence. All around me, individuals (not families on vacation or tour groups following a flag-carrying guide) moved in different directions across the piazza to start each of their days — untold different days, many of them probably mundane like my own days often are back home.

And I had been allowed a window into it. I was somehow (miraculously, it seemed!) permitted to observe a few bits of their morning routines. They drink tiny espressos quickly and standing at café counters rather than carrying large lidded paper cups with cardboard sleeves through their entire commute; drivers maneuver cars through tiny passages with no apparent rage at the pedestrians who choose to walk in the middle of the street rather than along sidewalks that are barely wider than an American curb; street peddlers glance up at the cross atop the basilica and make the sign of it across themselves, kissing a thumbnail before they set up their mobile souvenir shops for the day. All of this is backed by the church bells.

I can’t say why this moment — more than the Botticelli paintings, the Colosseum, David, and the Vatican — moved me so much, but it was here on the piazza that I was overcome with that expansive joy. And gratitude. To be alive, to have been given a life at all, to live in this world, and to get to see so much of it.

How to Be Alone Without (*Always*) Being Lonely: Tips for Solo Digital Nomads

Catania, Sicily
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!

In a coliving space, you will find an instant community of other solo travelers who are open to new friendships, having company on their adventures, and accompanying you on yours. In these spaces, I find that I can always participate as much or as little as I want without fear that if I decline an invitation to hang out with someone they won’t invite me the next time. I often choose which city I’m going to visit next because it has a coliving house that I’d like to stay in. That’s how I ended up in Catania, Sicily, where I am right now, staying at Cummari, a coliving for solo female travelers.

(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.)

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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!

Just this weekend, here in Sicily, I had a full-on weekend. I spent all day Saturday touring a nearby town with my 3 housemates and all day Sunday on the beach with 1 of my housemates. You want to know what I did last night? I ordered a pizza from the place on the corner (but of course since I’m in Sicily, even ordering a pizza to eat alone at home is still pretty freaking cool) and we got in bed together – me and the pizza – where I watched Together Together on Netflix. And that’s ok! (Together Together was also just “ok.”) You can’t just go, go, go all the time. Even if you’re in the most beautiful and exotic city in the world, you still need time to just veg out. It makes the go-go-go time even better.

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.