solo date night

22 Jan 2020

2019 taught me a lot about self-care. my current self-care routine (which i spent a lot of time and energy figuring out) looks like:

• daily commitment to my morning routine (meditation, tarot, asanas)
• saturday morning 1h walk in the arnold arboretum
• weekly solo date night
• monthly float (sensory deprivation tank)

i’m writing today about my solo date night practice because it came up several times at 2020 vision and i realized i’ve never written about it before (or if i have, it’s been a while).

i can’t remember what exactly made me adopt this practice, but i can think of two places it’s come up before: 1. my friend, harvey (from cbva) used to talk about masturdating; and 2. artist dates are a practice in the artist’s way by [insert author].

two years ago, i experienced a breakthrough around spending time with myself just like i spend time with cuties or friends. i book hangs with other folks weeks in advance… why don’t i do the same for myself??? am i not just as valuable as other people? (and, of course, the truth is that most people in my community (you know, those of us deeply working towards social justice and liberation) are conditioned to place others over ourselves).

so my solo date night practice looks like this:

• schedule it in advance. i usually have them planned out six weeks in advance. and whenever i schedule anything (meetings, travel, social events) farther out than six weeks, before i put anything else on my calendar i schedule a date night that week.
• i am flexible on what night of the week date night is.
• i aim to start at 6 and i hold a lot of rigor around it. if i have work meetings that are adjacent to date night, i speak about it just as clearly as if i were meeting another person. ex: “hey team, i have to get off this call; i have a date with someone at 6 and i really can’t be late because it’s disrespectful.”
• because i have a roommate and because being home often allows me to be distracted by house work, most of the time i take myself out for date night. i usually go to a local restaurant (15m walking or less), get myself a drink, bring a book to read or notebook to write/sketch in, and order something i’ve never had before. sometimes date night is a writing date. i’ll get a quick dinner, go to a coffee shop and set up to write (phone on airplane mode, computer with internet turned off) for 2-2.5 hours, depending on how quickly i ate.

there’s more to share, but, like most of the time when i’m morning writing, i gotta get on with my morning. thanks for listening! <3

words / writing / post-processing
448w / 13min / 7min