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The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café

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Re: The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café

#111

Post by munificent »

dubeye wrote: post #18

I assume there must be a finite amount of anxiety from sole cafe trips. I'm probably an above averagely anxious person, but after a few trips without disaster, it becomes a non issue.

> after a few trips without disaster

100%.

Exposure therapy is the cure for anxiety. I have a personal hunch that part of the massive rise in anxiety in the world is explained by many of us no longer being regularly forced outside of our comfort zones. Before the Internet and smartphones, we were obligated to go into the unknown much more often. It was a constant mandatory exposure therapy.

Today, I can't remember the last time I walked into a restaurant without already having seen the inside on Google Maps, read several reviews on Yelp, and perused the menu online.

Re: The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café

#112

Post by the__alchemist »

This doesn't match my experience at all, starting from the beginning. Many go to cafes alone to read, work, study etc. Seating set up for this, including small tables and bars. That's one of their biggest draws. With large fluctuations, I estimate ~30%.

I suspect this depends on the location, given this contrast. It seems the Author might be from Delaware, USA? I haven't been to any coffee shops there. Maybe this is an exception? Of interest, it does not match my experience in coffee shops elsewhere on the East Coast (Va, NC, Mass for example). Not my experience in various European countries as well.

Re: The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café

#113

Post by munificent »

d--b wrote: post #2

This is a highly romanticized view imo. I sit alone in cafes all the time, for many reasons. I don’t feel particularly joyful about it nor weird. I just do it to take a break and have something to drink, or wait for someone or something. Often I don’t look at my phone at all. That doesn’t feel weird either, or rebellious, or whatever the author experiences. I don’t understand the post at all. I’d have gone to Japan.…

Part of the magic of being human is the interplay between our external world and internal states.

Two people can go to the exact same venue, do the exact same things, and have radically different experiences because of how our different internal worlds collide with that same external world.

And a further part of the magic of being human is that we're then able to share those experiences with each other. I wouldn't want to diminish someone else's experience of a place simply because I didn't have that same experience.

Re: The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café

#114

Post by munificent »

sdoering wrote: post #30
Trasmatta wrote: post #16

> It’s contradictory to sit alone in a café. It’s against the reason cafés exist. > They are designed as meeting spaces. There is no table with a single chair. I'm so confused by this, because every cafe I've ever been to is full of people there alone. It seems to almost be the default, honestly.

I was also instantly struck by the intro of this piece of writing. It just doesn't make sense to me to state one's subjective interpretation as a universal fact, a universal law, as "the reason cafés exist". As if there is only one reason. I really do not get the tendency to reduce everything down to one singular reason or cause. Is this a monotheistic religious thing? Is this a binary thing? I just can't wrap my hea…

I really like the article but in order to get the most of it, I had to mentally change the author's writing style. I think the article works much better if you reframe it from second person to first person and restate the general platitudes as observations of one particular place and experience.

Re: The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café

#115

Post by the__alchemist »

gniv wrote: post #102
delis-thumbs-7e wrote: post #9

I didn’t quite understand why sitting alone in a café makes you a weirdo (is it an American thing?), but the piece was very well written. We all should learn how to be without electronics for every now and then, accompanied only our thoughts. It is good for the soul. I think the important part is leaving your phone and other devices home. Be alone, without even a possibility of connecting (apart from the old-fashione…

> (is it an American thing?) I don't know if the author is American but americanos are not an American thing so they are likely not in the US.

Challenge: Find a coffee shop in the US that doesn't have Americano on the menu.

Re: The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café

#116

Post by microflash »

I used to do this so often during my university days. In today's attention-starved ecosystem, drift is such a luxury. There's this urge to fill the gap, with scrolling on our phones, impulse shopping online, or just opening and closing the apps. We've subscribed to the fear of missing out, of being out of touch, of being left behind.

Drifting is a way to push all that feedback in the background. It does not necessarily have to be a staycation at a cafe. It can be a walk in a park, a morning jog with a friend who's comfortable with your silence, a book reading session in the twilight. We need to slow down and relax to truly appreciate the pace of life, and drifting is such an awesome way to do it. Lovely post. It reminded me of good times in the past, and that I need to make time for them in future.

Re: The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café

#117

Post by markus_zhang »

"The Unbearable Joy of Sitting Alone".

This is good enough for me. Yeah I have a family and a son, but I enjoy sitting alone with a cup of coffee (doesn't have to be in a Cafe), programming my own project.

As the article hints, sitting in a crowded place sometimes actually REDUCES distraction, because those white noise around me reduces the need to pull out my cell phone. I think I always perform better in such an environment.

Re: The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café

#118

Post by fuzzer371 »

unsungNovelty wrote: post #50

Too many negative comments here. This is just someone discovering something new and sharing it very excitedly. Almost 6-7 years ago, I read about a 30min challenge to sit upright without doing anything in a chair challenge. That changed how I think about distractions. If I had written about it, there surely will be people who would just like here say... What is so crazy about it? I do that all the time... To me, this…

[flagged]

Re: The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café

#119

Post by paavope »

dymk wrote: post #83
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've avoided the restaurant-QR-code deal so far. They don't have a menu I can read? I walk out.

Do you still leave if you’ve gone out to eat with someone else?

I think the easy play in that situation is to ask that someone else to show the menu to you

Re: The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café

#120

Post by fuzzer371 »

dymk wrote: post #83
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've avoided the restaurant-QR-code deal so far. They don't have a menu I can read? I walk out.

Do you still leave if you’ve gone out to eat with someone else?

In that case, I could just read it off of their phone
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