Shotgun Rider
On going solo: a preface
There are a few things you know for sure when you decide to go it alone, and there are a few things you find out.
One of the things you know is that you enjoy solitude. Some people know that from go; they set out on their trek through life knowing already that they'll make the journey mostly alone. Some discover that the familiar storyline of partnership and family isn’t for us by giving it the old college try or tries and realizing, however belatedly, that we’re better suited to a solitary way of being in the world.
You know that going solo will be challenging in lots of ways, though you don't always know which ways.
You think it'll be the big stuff, like realizing you're going to get old and die in your little cave or camper or cabin in the woods and some poor park ranger will have to come drag your corpse out by the ankles because you're too mean to die and you'll be like 120 when you finally do and everyone you know will have long since shuffled off this mortal coil, but in fact it's the small stuff, like not having enough arms to drive your truck and open a soda and pet the dog in your lap all at once, so you wedge the soda between the dog and your thigh and open the soda just as the dog decides to stand up and turn around and the soda explodes all over the steering wheel and your lap and the dog, who gives you the piteous How could you? look with soda dripping off her epic ears.
This week's post was going to be the first in a series on solo life.
Given the title of this thing - “Going Solo at the End of the World” - and given the fact that I've had significantly more opportunity to write about the end of the world than I was expecting of late but haven't really dug into going solo, I wanted to do that, and over the next few weeks, I will - I'll get into what solo life is, what makes it different from partnered or family life, why some people do it and why others don't, what value it has, what challenges and rewards it brings.
There are a couple of reasons solo life is on my mind.
One is that while I was stuck in L.A. last week getting fleeced by a car dealership, my friend Marlee got really pissed at me when I told her I'd figure it out my [fucking] self. She told me part of being solo is not insisting on doing everything your [fucking] self and sent me an article about Chris McCandless, the guy John Krakauer wrote about in Into the Wild, who died in that very wild, whether as the result of his own pigheadedness or for some confluence of other reasons, with a text that said, "THIS guy did solo wrong."
And she's right. There are ways to do solo life right and a whole lot of ways to do it wrong. Part of the journey is figuring out which is which, and how to tell what the right ways are.
Another reason is this: there's an excellent article in this month's issue of The Atlantic (this link may be paywalled, but you can find it online if you’re determined) that gets into some of the thornier aspects of aloneness in contemporary life. The article explores the myriad negative effects of isolation on individual and civic life and the recursive nature of those negative effects - the feedback loop in which social malaise infects individual life and individual malaise makes societies sick.
I read the article as I was hiding in my truck in the dark so I didn't have to walk through a room full of people I didn't know, and while I’d do it again, the irony was not lost on me.
But look: there are a lot of ways of living, a lot of ways of being who you are.
No one among us does it right or even particularly well; no way of life is perfect or without cost.
Solo life isn't for everyone. It’s probably not for very many people at all. It also isn't absolute: my life is upheld, made buoyant, made possible, in fact, by an intricate, unreasonably strong web of friendships in which I place my faith.
The past five years have proven that faith, in too many cases, misplaced. The road I've traveled in that same period of time has, without fail, turned up new and unexpected connections at every single dusty stop along the way. Those connections have blossomed into friendships; those friendships have strengthened and expanded the reach of the human web of which I persist in believing we are all a part.
I don't think a single day goes by when I don't think or write or say aloud both Why are people so shitty? and What would I do without these incredible people?
And I mean both. People are being really shitty. And every time I get another ding or crack in my stupid heart, somebody else hops in the truck, trades me half a sandwich for my dinged-up heart, and gets to work piecing it back together with duct tape and Gorilla Glue.
Anyway, I was going to get into the whole solo life thing this week, but then there was Luna.
If you’re newer to the Going Solo journey, you might not have gotten a chance to meet my beloved console companion Zeke, who went on to higher roads back in June. I’ve been a mess ever since, more or less, and while admittedly the world’s been an extra-shitty shitshow during that same period of time, traveling through an increasingly unhinged nation, which would have been alarming in any case, has been, sans dog, very seriously not cool.
I had a hunch even back in June—I talked about it a bit in Riffs & Rants Episode 10, which I posted right after Zeke died—that my understanding of solo life was about to change. And it has. I’m more aware than ever that the web of human connection of which I get to be a part is vibrant and vital - more sharply aware of how much people are hurt and are hurting - more acutely conscious of how we got here, and more concerned about what’s ahead.
When Zeke died, several people told me they figured now I’d realize I was lonely, and solo life would lose its appeal, and I’d wind up in a relationship with a person, as kind of a default, I guess? I replied - and I believe - that given the choice of a partner or a dog, anyone in their right mind would choose a dog. Some people, I know, have both; but there’s only so much space in the truck, and you gotta leave room for your gear, and partners typically weigh more than dogs, and that creates drag, and partners hog the bed in ways chihuahuas just don’t, and any way you cut it, partners don’t wake up every day and stand on your chest and lick your nose - thank god - and remind you that no matter how befucked the world, you still gotta get up and go for a walk.
As Luna and I wind our way across the U.S. from west to east, south to north, and then all the way back west in the next few weeks,
we’ll tackle the matter of going solo, report from the polar vortex and the desert heat, revisit Oakley, Kansas, swing through the Deep South, seek out the kind people and pockets of joy we’ve never yet failed to find, and do our best to bring you some stories, because stories still matter, and I think maybe they heal.
Welcome, Luna. This isn’t just any lady with a Lap dog. She has you. The world is a bit brighter now!
I'm relieved to read this, after your last piece about being close to those raging fires, Marya. Loved your observation about your dinged-up heart and the duct tape and Gorilla Glue of humanity.