Aloneish: Wobbling Between Solitude and Connection

On happy hour, highballs, and the practice of other people

Happy New Moon in Spooky Season!

Illustration by Manuna Grabarnick

I’m sitting at my neighborhood watering hole (aptly called “Cocktail Bar”), where I’m a happy hour fixture. A few times a week at 5 p.m., I slink away from my studio, where I’ve been hermiting all day, and cozy up to the wood with my notebook, a stiff drink, and noise-canceling headphones. This ritual may not look like much, but it’s an essential part of my practice—a way to anchor myself in the space between solitude and connection.

Solitude has always been both a refuge and a risk for me. I’m a quiet thinker, a Piscean artist who can lose hours on solo projects, meditation, or watching my demon cats sun themselves. I feel most myself in that mode, but stir-crazy isolation can creep if I’m not careful. More than a few times, I’ve slipped down the solitude slide into abject loneliness. The practice, I’ve found, is in noticing this oscillation—the smooth movement between needing alone time and needing the proximity of other bodies — and learning to ride it back and forth.

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This need to oscillate between solo and shared presence is a natural rhythm, a sine wave that differs in frequency and amplitude for everyone. We can learn to attune ourselves to our own rhythm — to know when our minds and bodies are calling for retreat from the bustling world and when it’s time to let the energy of others pull us out of our heads and back into connection.

When my own sine wave starts it’s uptick towards extroversion, I’m usually drawn to the low-brow spaces: moody bars with shelves full of tinctures, dive cafés with weathered armchairs. It’s been a habit since I was a kid.

I used to spend my after-school hours exploring the hotel where my grandmother (who raised me) worked as a waitress. I’d buzz quietly around the building, watching people on dinner dates, eavesdropping on gossip around the pool, imagining the big outer world that all these people and their suitcases were checking in from.

My favorite was to hover at the entrance of the jazz bar. The soft chatter, the clink of glasses, the pianist’s sideways smile. The bartenders’ gifts of cocktail cherries and Shirley Temples. It was there that I first felt the magic of being alone together—the tension of being suspended in a web of lives other than my own. These spaces became a practice in observing others, observing myself within the noise, and allowing myself to feel connected without losing my own quiet.

For us neurodivergent folx, the tension between solitude and connection can be tricky to navigate. Social spaces come with challenges—the hum of conversations, booming playlists, and the dreaded sustained eye contact 👀. But neurodivergent or not, the weird feels that bubble up under the gaze of another are our practice edges.

Here at the bar, my earbuds (glorified earplugs, really - the music is off) give me a buffer, a quiet cocoon. They’re also a kind of throttle: I can pull them out to share a laugh or pop them back in to signal I’m not open for small talk. In this way, these spaces become a training ground—learning how to be with others and maintain an anchor of presence.

In my core practice lineage of Dzogchen, we meditate with our eyes open for exactly this reason - to draw the sense of self out of the head, dissolve the artificial idea that we are alone “in here”, and begin to merge our awareness with the motion and noise of the world-at-large. It’s harder to practice this way - yes, but it’s a powerful way to ease the subtle perception of oneself as an island. To feel viscerally that we are both solitary and inextricably connected at all times.

When we can be with others without losing connection to the quiet of ourselves, we find an endogenous feeling of belonging. Everyday sanctuaries, like this cocktail bar, can be invitations to practice existing in that space where solitude and connection flow into one another. It’s enough just to sit, drink, and feel the oscillation between self and world until even the oscillation itself relaxes into the bigger picture: solitude and connection are two sides of the same coin.

I pull out my headphones to order another drink and Creep by TLC has just hit the playlist. Obvi, I start singing (because how can you not?) and the bartender starts singing, and the couple down the bar, too. Suddenly the whole tiny place is belting, “So I creep, YEAAA-AAAA / Just creeepin’ on the down-low…” and I’m not sure where Tasha ends and the glorious cacophony begins.

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October’s Meditation Session

TIME: October 17 @ 8-9 PM EST

DEETS: In this month's session, we’ll explore the oscillation between solitude and interconnection. We'll tune into how the body and mind react to both and practice maintaining a sense of spacious equilibrium, even under the gaze of another.

COST: This session is offered freely. Please consider paying what you can within your means.

REGISTER HERE ✨

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That’s all for now!
You’ll hear from me again on the Full Moon.

❤️ Tasha

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(PS. In the meantime, you can join me & Jeff Warren on our weekly practice excursions over at The Mind Bod Adventure Pod!)