Time spent as a loner

For the last few months, I've been in a bit of a hibernation period. An awful travel experience with some acquaintances in June made me withdraw and not want to be social as much. Normally, I would flag my urges to withdraw as a sign of an oncoming depressive cycle. But something told me otherwise.

Rather than doing what I normally would do, which is scolding myself or forcing myself to go out more, I took a different approach. I gave myself permission to withdraw and not go out as much. Initially this was difficult, as the social gods were threatening to curse me with loneliness for the rest of my life. But the more I embraced the quiet, the less they came around.

So what did I do instead of go out, you may wonder? I mean, how much can one take before boredom settles in?

I started going on long daily walks while listening to audiobooks. In particular, I just finished Ram Dass’s Love, Service + Devotion, which is a series of lectures on the Bhagavad Gita. In Ram Dass nature, it’s hilarious and brilliantly insightful (highly recommend). These walks became a breath of fresh air for me.

In addition to walking I started learning about cryptocurrency. I've gone down youtube rabbit holes learning about crypto and have even gotten friends to invest. Never thought I would, but I've found crypto to be quite fascinating.

Though journaling has always been a part of my life, I started experimenting with a new way of writing. It's called writing with your non-dominant hand. Bea, an incredibly insightful healer in Tulum, recommended I read The Power of Your Other Hand by Lucia Cappacione. Writing with the non-dominant hand helps us access the other side of our brain, which often involves problem-solving, creative thinking and the inner child voice. This soon became a way for me to connect with my innermost thoughts and helped me deepen and own voice as an artist.

Writing with my other hand led me down a curious path back to watercolor and drawing. I've never been particularly "good" at either, but my curiosity once again led me down a youtube rabbit hole. In just a few videos, my paintings went from blah to ah– still no Picasso, but at least not trashworthy.

Then I started watching Spanish language series on Amazon. This helped me improve my Spanish comprehension and get more of the slang down.

I started regularly cooking again and have regained a sense of satisfaction in feeding myself. Years of living in New York conditioned me to eat out or get delivery. But the more I cooked for myself, the more I started to feel good.

For 21 days straight I did a 7AM kundalini practice online, through RAW Residency, taught by Prakash. Waking up to this kind of vibe set me on course for the rest of the day. It was a great reminder to me to let myself just be instead of forcing myself to go out.

A few times throughout this hibernation I got caught in the social media FOMO and judged myself for not getting out more, but that honestly would only last for a few minutes, and then I'd find myself lost in another book, drawing or idea.

I also dug into EFT tapping in a six-week course with Jennifer Patridge, and it has truly been such a wonderful gift to explore this modality. Tapping was never on my to-do list, but when the opportunity presented itself, I thought why not? Holy.Camole. If you're not familiar with tapping, I'd explain it like this: If NLP and Chinese Acupuncture were to have a baby, it would EFT Tapping. It's a powerful modality for processing blocks / any limiting belief and replacing them with empowering ones. It's helped me so much in my relationships, business and life that I enrolled to do a tapping certification program. If any of you want to learn more about it or experience it, message me. I’d love to do some tapping together.

During the quiet, I finished writing the manuscript of my memoir (and first book). For much of August, I wrote a few hours a day, feeling the spaciousness to express myself on paper with ease. In the end, I completed the manuscript with a whopping 91,000 words! For reference, The Hobbit is ~86,000 words. What I discovered during this process was such a huge gift, and no doubt I would not have been able to do it had I not taken the solo time to do so.

Once I finished my manuscript, I decided to foster a rescue dog. Living with another species is an incredible teacher. Sami who is a nine-month pup has taught me how to communicate, listen, lead, love unconditionally and to care for another with gentleness and playfulness. I taught him how to sit, lie down, stay and so many other things that it made me pause to think about what the birds and tarantulas are communicating to us in their own way. The other day a bird flew right up to my window, and it actually let me pet it. Imagine that! I’ve never pet a wild bird.

I think not pressuring myself to go out has done wonders. Instead of filling my days with meetings, I really allowed myself to just do nothing and explore the other side of busy-ness with aimlessness. And I discovered in that space how much I enjoy my own company- imagine that hahaha.

Sharing all this as I’ve been a bit silent online (and offline). But I am slowly feeling my legs and arms stretching after a long hibernation.

All this is to say, my biggest fear of being a loner is not so bad. It led me here.