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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

#221

Post by esseph »

zwnow wrote: post #186
et-al wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't see the issue because you're not squeezed yet. Imagine there are no more cheap places to rent anymore and American work culture invades Europe. Shops are no longer closed on Sunday, you're expected to be on call on weekends, and you have a paltry 14 days of vacation for the year.

This would require a lot of changes in basic human rights and legislatures that would never go through within my lifetime so Ill just not think about this. Nuclear war is far more likely to happen during my lifetime.

> This would require a lot of changes in basic human rights and legislatures that would never go through within my lifetime

I thought the same thing

- US citizen

Re: The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café

#222

Post by randycupertino »

vlod wrote: post #211
cm2012 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying to sit still for 30 min without any stimulation at all (no talking, watching, reading) sounds like torture to me.

"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." - Blaise Pascal I try and think about this often.

Reminds me of the trend of "raw dogging flights" - ie no book, no TV, no music, no headphones. https://www.travelweek.ca/news/airlines/what-is-raw-dogging-...

Re: The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café

#223

Post by anotherevan »

patrickmay wrote: post #215
reg_dunlop wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My therapist used to say: this means you must do it for 40 minutes

Meditate for 30 minutes every morning. If you don't have time, meditate for 60 minutes.

I want to add that to my quotes database[1]. Would "Patrick May" be the right attribution?

[1] https://q4td.blogspot.com/

Re: The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café

#224

Post by normie3000 »

2ap wrote: post #169
cm2012 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying to sit still for 30 min without any stimulation at all (no talking, watching, reading) sounds like torture to me.

Part of my job, is that I design protocols to help young children lie in MRI scanners for a living. We have all sorts of techniques to help with this. However, for each new scanning protocol, I like to have had it myself - so I know what the children go through. And, at times lying inside a MRI scanner, detached from the world, with only the noise of the scanner (very reduced with our new noise cancelling headphones)…

I absolutely love going in the machine. Highly meditative and usually I fall asleep by the end. You can get the soundtrack on YouTube too, but it's not quite the same.

What works to get children to stay still though?

Re: The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café

#225

Post by anotherevan »

cm2012 wrote: post #69
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…

Trying to sit still for 30 min without any stimulation at all (no talking, watching, reading) sounds like torture to me.

If nothing else, having to go to church every Sunday in my youth taught be to be able to sit still while bored off my brain for an hour a week.

Re: The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café

#226

Post by johnnyanmac »

fencepost wrote: post #212
johnnyanmac wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one downside of non-urban life (and crappy public transportation). It's overall quieter than if I lived downtown and I appreciate that. But in terms of walking, I have a Mexican joint and then everything else takes effort. The Wal Mart plaza is only a mile away, but unfortunately its a fully uphill mile that has me going 200 feet in elevation. And in terms of cafe, it's simply a tiny corner Starbucks. The local j…

If this is something you want to do you might consider a bike. A 6 mile round trip on for for coffee seems a bit much, but 3 miles each way on a bike shouldn't be bad unless you're in a city (in which case there should be things closer). You could also do this same thing with a thermos of coffee/tea and a local park.

Once the job situation is out of the way (which sadly might take a while in this market), I wouldn't mind that idea. It plays double duty in helping to loa weight I really need to lose as well. Any hesitation I have to bike around a few miles is entirely my own fault in terms of health, so I should buck that mentality.

My nearest park is 6-7 miles away, meanwhile. I don't know about going there for coffee, but it'd be a nice little bike route. My city does fortunately have quite a few dedicated bike paths as some solace against the usual car centric society.

Re: The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café

#227

Post by fragmede »

bovermyer wrote: post #168
ugjjhgvjb wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So… stimulate yourself? > Work on becoming a source of thoughts rather than a consumer of thoughts. This is the classic “sounds deep but actually means nothing” vague statement that’s only meant to massage one’s ego and try to reenforce an unsubstantiated idea in a faux-philosophical way. You are always “sourcing” thoughts even when “consuming”. Being able to sit still, quietly without having to stimulate oneself is,…

In order to avoid all stimulation, there is but one recourse, and it is rather final. Generally, I prefer just sitting quietly and not worrying about the definition of stimulation or whether I'm doing it correctly.

A session in a sensory deprivation tank isn't final so I'd recommend that over some other solution that is final.

Re: The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café

#228

Post by amelius »

coolThingsFirst wrote: post #200
amelius wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you feel like being a weirdo when you are alone in public transit? Maybe you should treat cafes the same?

Transit is different, you are going from one place to another. Cafes are where people that know each other come to socialize. You will almost never see a lone person in a cafe in the country where I live in, and a lively conversation tends to pull other people in as well. It's just different so their initial thought of it being awkward without further reflection is based on reality not some blown up fear. I also say…

> Transit is different, you are going from one place to another.

What if you are going from A to B, but in the middle you go to a cafe to grab a coffee, and maybe wait a bit for your connection?

Re: The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café

#229

Post by 999900000999 »

coolThingsFirst wrote: post #149
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…

No, it's a thing everywhere to be honest. People are their with their friends and you are the only one alone. Without phone it would be too cringe, even with phone its cringe. I behave as if though I'm texting someone. It's the societal weight of being the one who is alone.

Other people don't care nearly as much you think.

If I want to see a movie, I see a movie. If I want to travel, I travel.

Now with my last vacation I happened to be on the same continent as a long term friend who I hadn't seen in very long time. We met up, and it was like we were hanging out in college again.

But I had a great time traveling solo before that.

If you have the mentality that you need to be around your friends constantly you'll never try anything new.

Re: The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café

#230

Post by 2ap »

normie3000 wrote: post #224
2ap wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of my job, is that I design protocols to help young children lie in MRI scanners for a living. We have all sorts of techniques to help with this. However, for each new scanning protocol, I like to have had it myself - so I know what the children go through. And, at times lying inside a MRI scanner, detached from the world, with only the noise of the scanner (very reduced with our new noise cancelling headphones)…

I absolutely love going in the machine. Highly meditative and usually I fall asleep by the end. You can get the soundtrack on YouTube too, but it's not quite the same. What works to get children to stay still though?

Ah, depends on the child!

But for kids over 8, a nice long form video works well. That, and having enough time so that they don't feel like we're in a rush, but also not taking to long to load them onto the scanner...

For the younger ones, it's very much dependent on the child. So we take a bit of time to get to know them before we get them to attend. We have videos to prep them, and can follow a script when loading them (e.g. becoming an astronaut and blasting off into space...).

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