The 2 Types of Alone. Part One: The Housesit.

Before setting out on this trip, I hadn’t realized that there are different ways a person can be alone. There is being alone amongst other people, which most experience everyday while doing things like running errands, going to appointments, taking yourself out to lunch, etc. Then there is a solitary kind of alone where there is no one to keep you company other than your cat or dog or the sound of your own voice. And as a solo traveller, you experience these different kinds of “alone” depending on your choice of accommodation.

Housesitting falls more in line with the latter of the two—it’s a solitary kind of alone (I’ll talk more about the “alone around others” in my next post about hostel dwelling). Before I left, I signed up with a house sitting website that matches home and pet owners with travellers or people in the area who like spending time in a stranger’s house, taking care of their animals while they’re away on vacation.

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Reasons I wanted to housesit while travelling:

Cute animals. Duh.

Free accommodations.

A bedroom you don’t have to share with 10 other people.

A bathroom you don’t have to share with an entire floor.

Some much-needed peace and quiet.

Did I already mention the animal thing?

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As an introvert, I value time by myself. Not only do I enjoy it, but I also need it to recharge and to curb any feelings of anxiety that develop in my day-to-day life. This is not to say that I value time alone more than I value time with people. Rather, it’s about listening to what my head needs. And I’ve noticed over the years that my anxiety kicks into overdrive if I don’t give myself enough time alone.

Solitude is where I find my footing. It’s where I ground myself in what I know to be reality, rather than what my anxiety would have me believe is reality. I use this unaccompanied time to silence the voices in my head telling me things like “Nothing you do will ever be good enough” or “You will never be anything other than a body harbouring a broken mind” before those words have the chance to take root.

Statements like these attribute to me living in a state of perpetual cognitive dissonance. I know the vast majority of things my head tells me when I’m anxious are lies fabricated by my mental illness, just as I know the sky above my head is blue. Well, actually, right now it’s grey and covered in rain clouds—that’s Scotland in the fall for you—but I know there’s a blue sky hiding up there somewhere. Despite that knowledge, however, at times my head believes that the earth’s atmosphere is only ever cloudy and that blue skies are purely mythological. Make sense?

Time alone is where I do what I can to see beyond the cloud cover. It’s not always easy, but the end result is very rewarding. That said, a person can only stare at the sky for so long before they strain their eyes. And as much as I enjoy time to myself, I have to be careful not to damage my eyes by letting “alone” turn into “lonely.”

When I first got to Edinburgh, I didn’t really speak to another person for 4 days. Of course, I talked to people—the woman selling tickets at the museum or the man ringing my groceries up—but I was without any form of conversation once my housesit host had left for her vacation. And no, the one-sided conversations I had with the cat I’m looking after don’t count.

At first, I didn’t notice. I’m generally a fairly quiet person, so I was happy to putter around the city in silence. It wasn’t until I called my best friend in California that I realized just how silent I’d been and how much I actually missed the back and forth of good repartee.

Since then, I’ve had to make a conscious effort to seek out conversation wherever possible. Whether it’s calling people back home, interjecting myself into the conversations of fellow tourists while out doing touristy things (politely, of course, with jokes), or pressing the baristas at the various local coffee shops to say more than “That’ll be £2.50, please.” Because the one thing I’ve learned housesitting so far is that while I cherish having time alone, it’s the people in my life that prevent me from ever feeling lonely.