The Art of Being Alone (Even When You're Home)

I'm writing this from a corner table at my local café- not my café, just the one where they've stopped asking what I want and started pouring before I sit down. Duke is at my feet, our twelve-year-old rescue dog who hates being alone almost as much as I do. Which makes us perfect companions for this particular moment.

The house is quiet. My wife Emma and the kids are in Australia, living their best life on the other side of the planet while I'm here in Europe with a dog who gives me judgmental looks every time I reach for my phone. Fair enough, Duke. Fair enough.

This is an unusual role reversal. For years, I've been the one sending photos from airport lounges and hotel rooms while my family held down the fort at home. Now they're the ones having adventures while I'm... well, I'm finally home. And it turns out being alone in your own environment is its own particular flavor of strange.

The past few months have been properly chaotic. Late summer and early autumn are always my personal version of madness—waking up in different hotels most nights, sometimes walking into walls because I thought that's where the bathroom should be. (Spoiler: that was the last hotel.) Living out of a suitcase, eating alone in anonymous restaurants, the whole nomadic dance...

But this? This is different.

When you're alone on the road, there's an adventure to it. You're anonymous. Nobody knows you. You can be whoever you want for that one meal, that one night. There's a romantic loneliness to it, like you're Bill Murray in Lost in Translation, floating through someone else's city.

Being alone at home is less romantic. It's just... you. In your own spot. Where the barista knows your order and asks about your family. Where you could easily fill every minute with productive tasks, projects, catching up on the hundred things that pile up when you're on the road. The temptation to stay busy is everywhere. Which is exactly why I'm forcing myself to sit still.

I'm using this time to work on something I'm building- a project that's growing out of these weekly dispatches. (Hold tight on that one.) But I'm also trying to practice something I've never been particularly good at: being comfortable in my own company without immediately reaching for the next distraction.

Sitting alone never comes naturally. Not in strange cities, not in familiar cafés. The urge to fill the space is constant. Check the phone. Make a list. Plan the next thing. Anything to avoid just... being here. Observing. Noticing the couple at the next table who order the same thing every morning. The way afternoon light hits the espresso machine. The rhythm of a place you know well but rarely take time to actually see.

Duke helps. He's mastered the art I'm still learning- he just exists without apology. Doesn't scroll. Doesn't plan. Just sits there, occasionally sighing like he's got the weight of the world on his shoulders.

The irony is once again not lost on me that I spent my entire athletic career learning to be comfortable with discomfort. How to sit with pain, with fatigue, with the voice that says "this is impossible." But somehow I never learned to sit with quiet. With stillness. With the kind of moment where nothing needs to happen and nobody's measuring your output.

So here I am, practicing I guess. Going out maybe once a day. Sitting with the familiar discomfort of not filling every moment. Working on projects that matter to me. Training because it's still my daily non-negotiable. And spending a great amount of time with a dog who judges my screen time habits.

My takeaway isn't that you need to spend more time alone- it's learning to actually want those moments. Because life will hand them to you whether you're ready or not. Restaurants. Hotel rooms. Airport gates…

So practice being bored. Properly bored. Sit at a café and watch people. Let your mind wander without directing it. I’ve found the ideas that show up when you're not forcing them are often the ones worth keeping. And somewhere in that space between reaching for distraction and actually being present, you might find yourself to be pretty decent company.

From the corner table,

Jan and Duke.