So you planned a trip with your handy-dandy travel buddy. It’s going to be fucking phenomenal. It’s booked. It’s paid for. It’s kind of planned.

Then your travel buddy is rude enough to have a family emergency/die/breakup with you.

You could be fucked. Or you could grab your balls, pull up your big-girl panties, or call your therapist for an additional appointment between now and the trip, but however you get there, you take that that trip.

Believe me, it’s the distraction you need from the work emails, which are probably the reason you operate at such a heightened level of angst.

You can stay in a hotel room by yourself. That’s the best time to be a lot too much too naked. Or not because hotel rooms are effing cold. Nevertheless there isn’t anyone snoring while you’re getting your precious vacation sleep.

You can eat alone. If you’ve never sat at a bar or a communal table for a meal, just try it. Worst case scenario is some eager beaver booze hound will stop seeing you when the bartender approaches but you’ve been begging for invisibility, and now you know what it feels like to have a man in sweats sign for his $20 cocktail on your back. Best case, you make friends, even if they only last the duration of the meal.

You can go to a bar alone. You’re typically drunk after a single drink anyway so either become super friendly, or super hermit-y, but you told Eddie you were going to spend your vacation knee deep in bourbon, so do that, or gin, or beer or whatever makes you happy in the moment. Try new things.

Throw caution and the last months payment to your savings to the wind, find something out of your normal spending habits and do it. For me this is extravagant spa services, but there are other things you can spurge on, maybe surf lessons or something? It’s worth the money to be a most extreme version of yourself.

And remember solo you have the time to sit at and see if what the installation of Pleiades looks like after the full 15+ minute meditation.

Then, if all else fails, read a book or pull out a blog you haven’t written on in over a test to hold your hand through a three drink dinner that the German* dude didn’t want to talk to you through.

*given the book he was reading he’s probably Swedish and text his wife/person about how annoying I was.