The unbearable joy of sitting alone in a café

2026-01-0414:37802434candost.blog

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Essay

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. Even the ones placed right by the window with high seating are big tables with many chairs.

Cafés are community spaces. Most go there to see their loved ones, friends, or colleagues.

You find only a few people sitting alone. Most are buried in their laptops, working hard to make a living in their own worlds, whatever world they have.

I rarely do that.

When I took time off from work, I chose a staycation. Unlike most of my friends, who visited Japan in 2025.

When I heard their experiences, I was jealous. When I told them my staycation plans of doing nothing for four weeks, they were jealous.

While off work, I wanted to slow time down as much as I could. The best way to freeze time, I read somewhere, is to get a dog. Luckily, I have one already. So, I took long walks with my dog.

What used to feel like 10 minutes between breakfast and lunch while working became a full-blown day. Even though I was spending two hours walking my dog instead of a 30-40 minute rush, it felt like an eternity. A peaceful eternity.

On the second day, I decided to leave my phone at home, so I lived those two hours to the fullest. I didn’t take any device that could connect me to the internet or to other people.

I was nervous.

But all the anxiety evaporated after 30 minutes.

I felt free, so to speak.

It wasn’t that nobody could reach out to me that felt like an escape; it was that I couldn’t reach out to anyone or anything that caused the turmoil.

I had no possibility to text anyone. No possibility to watch or read. No chance to look up anything to fulfill my curiosity.

My mind was alone after a long time.

There were a few moments I put my hand into my pocket to take out my phone to look up something I was curious about. My phone wasn’t there.

I smiled. Every. Single. Time.

On the second day, I randomly walked into a neighborhood café. I ordered an americano with a double shot of espresso.

Sipping a hot americano feels different when you are in a rush to catch a subway. Its purpose is to wake you up. A sip from that little hole in a single-use cap burns my tongue every time. I despise that.

With a porcelain cup, you don’t have that. Coffee changes its purpose. It becomes a pleasure.

I sat down with a proper cup of americano. My dog crawled under the table.

I was sitting alone in a café with a dog that had crawled under the table without any electronics that could distract me.

Distract me from, basically, nothing.

It was pure delight. Every element. Or rather, the non-existence of any element. No phone. No headphones. No tablet. No laptop.

My mind was just drifting with the chatter in the café. I left myself to the flow.

When you let your thoughts wander, they take you on a journey you’ll never think possible. You reflect on the smallest details of your fast life. Your brain absorbs all the mistakes you’ve made. You accept that you can’t change failures anymore, as much as you feel guilty.

You might as well not worry about them and focus on what you can change: what you do now. And what you will do next.

Nothing else.

The next day, I left my phone at home again and decided to stop by the same café. I was lucky; I sat down at the same table.

Sitting alone in a café without distractions reveals a lot about people. The same people you pass by in a split second while rushing from home to work, from a meeting to a meeting. The invisible suddenly appears right in front of you. People don’t go away in two seconds. They stay. They sip a coffee. They talk with others, laugh, cry, and worry. Oh, worry.

Worry is only visible in people’s eyes. Eyes are the channel of the heart. You have to close your ears and look at people’s eyes to see their hearts.

You realize that looking into eyes is frightening—both for you and the other person. You try to avoid it, but eventually make eye contact because nobody is physically moving anywhere.

As none of you are passing by in a second, you mimic looking at something else. They continue their conversation. But you saw their worry, and you can’t help but try to understand.

You leave the café to avoid making things awkward.

I went there the next day. This time, my table was occupied. I don’t know when it became my table. But it felt like that. I found another one. It was closer to the staff.

Sitting alone in a café without distractions shows you how a café works. You never contemplate how they operate behind that giant coffee machine while you’re waiting for your coffee before you run to catch the next bus, tram, subway, or taxi. You never ruminate when you sip from a single-use cup and burn your tongue.

You notice how the staff circulates porcelain cups, from dirty to clean, to the top of the coffee machine. You observe the staff’s reactions to each customer. You try to analyze if someone is a regular by noticing how the staff talks.

You wonder whether they consider you a regular, since you’ve been there for the last couple of days. Or they call you a creepy guy with a dog. You will never know. You’re not fine with never knowing.

You promise yourself to come the next day to observe how the staff talks to you.

I again went to the same café. Unlucky me. A different staff were working on that day. Yet I ordered the same: a cup of americano with a double shot of espresso.

Sitting alone in a café without distractions, with a dog that had crawled under the table, brings a light to a truth: you can’t control or influence other people’s thoughts and feelings, no matter what you do. Staff may think of you as a weirdo with a dog; your friends might want to be in your place; your family might be nervous because they can’t reach out to you.

You know you can’t change any of those unless you change who you are. It makes you feel alone and powerless.

You are alone and powerless. You encounter a deep challenge.

The next day, I didn’t go to the café. I instead took an even longer walk. I went there the following day, knowing I had faced that challenge in my longest walk.

Sitting alone in a café without distractions shows everyone you’re alone.

It’s an alone act.

A scary but powerful one.

Many avoid at all costs. That’s why everybody looks at you with wondering eyes. They are afraid of your powerful joy. They can’t grasp why someone would do this to themselves. They are hesitant but are thinking of doing the same.

Then you realize you’re planting thoughts in people’s minds that you can’t control. Feelings are feelings. Thoughts are thoughts.

Just at the moment you think you are alone again, you see another weirdo across the café sitting alone without distractions. That weirdo is looking at your sleeping-in-a-croissant-shape dog under the table. Weirdo is enjoying the moment, while your dog is on an adventure in her second dream.

You smile. You know you’re not alone. You are one weirdo sitting at a distance from one other. You know there are many.

Maybe one of them is reading this and feeling heard. Perhaps one will never see this and will always feel alone. But it only needs one look around. You glance over the café and leave with a smile.

The next day, I went there again. This time, I put in an intentional distraction. A good one.

Sitting alone in a café without distractions only gets better when there is something to write on. Not with a keyboard. You must use your single hand to write, not two. Ideally, with a pen on paper.

The pen is meant to slow you down. The words shouldn’t land on paper at the speed of thinking or even talking.

The writing must hurt your wrist or hand. It must turn into a burden. That pain is a signal telling you that you have written long enough. Maybe you wrote only five lines. Perhaps one thousand.

It doesn’t matter.

You take a break.

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Comments

By unsungNovelty 2026-01-0417:0614 reply

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 post is someone's joy and curiosity shared through a well written piece. Everybody discover certain things at different stages of their lives. What's so bad about that?

Was able to bring a smile on my face. A good post. :)

By safety1st 2026-01-052:295 reply

Stillness isn't only enjoyable (for some), it's incredibly valuable. Stoicism and Buddhism both talk a lot about it and they're not the only ones. I make a point of sitting comfortably and doing nothing with no stimuli for 5-10 minutes every morning.

Inevitably when you're still with no distractions, your subconscious starts surfacing various thoughts. There is a random element to what pops into your head, but there will also be patterns. Just sitting there and observing, and maybe asking yourself a few questions about what emerges, is an incredible way to become aware of your emotional state, stay grounded to your goals, and remember what truly matters to you. This exercise frequently reorders my plans for the rest of the day.

There's also value in stillness when you're in public or with other people. Just shutting up and taking in your surroundings for 30-60 seconds is kind of like a mini superpower, you start noticing little things that other people don't see. Many of the little decisions you make automatically throughout the day get better if you just, y'know, sit there and think about them quietly for 1 minute. You end up going to a better restaurant, or remembering to call a loved one, because you simply took a moment to just pause and reflect.

It's the best thing in the world really. All this mindfulness stuff has profound benefits.

By thunfischtoast 2026-01-059:261 reply

A great exercise while being still is to put your attention to various parts of your body: what does the air smell like? What do you hear? How does the chair under your butt and the ground under your feet feel like? Try not to think too much, let the thoughts come and go like cars on a motorway, but observe closely in and around you.

By unsungNovelty 2026-01-054:131 reply

Agree. And another way in Hinduism is - mantras. They kind of reset you brain. Saying them kind of helps you observe everything around you with ease. Suddenly, you connect with your body and surroundings. It helps you especially when stressed and anxious situations. I don't know the word in English, but it makes you achieve ekagrutha. My fam says the word is concentration. But not sure if it is the exact translation.

And you have the added benefit being to able to pick the god of your choice that resonates with you and recite their mantras.

By SoftTalker 2026-01-053:36

I do this in the sauna at my gym. 30 minutes with no talking, no phones, no screens. Just your own thoughts, and sweat.

By rhubarbtree 2026-01-057:091 reply

Far more effective for me personally is walking. No headphones, somewhere fairly quiet.

By hliyan 2026-01-055:052 reply

There's an argument to be made that what alcohol achieves, and what meditation aims to achieve (and often fails) is the same thing: disengaging the prefrontal cortex. Once our basic needs are met, our higher brain functions can become an impediment to happiness, since they have neither a shut off switch nor a goal threshold -- it is insatiable, and will continue to analyze threats and manufacture problems to solve.

By tkgally 2026-01-055:553 reply

> Too many negative comments here.

I wonder if the author’s use of “you” rubbed some people the wrong way: “You are alone and powerless. You encounter a deep challenge,” “When you let your thoughts wander, they take you on a journey you’ll never think possible,” etc.

The pronoun seems intended to refer to the author’s own experiences, but I can see why some readers might think it refers to them. I had a bit of a negative reaction to those “you”s myself, as I experience cafés very differently from the author.

I have a similar negative reaction to op-ed articles that use “we” to refer to some sort of personified zeitgeist. From some essays currently appearing in the Opinion section of the New York Times:

“We are all in a constant state of grief, even though we don’t always admit it.”

“But we spend much of our lives in weaker friendship markets, where people are open to conversation, but not connection.”

“Over the past six decades or so, we chose autonomy, and as a result, we have been on a collective journey from autonomy to achievement to anxiety.”

By kqr 2026-01-0515:491 reply

Oh, this one is difficult. I vacillated a lot in my early writing between I, we, and you.

Too many "I" sounds self-fixated and irrelevant for the reader. "You" is way too presumptive, unless addressing a specific person or specific group with actual evidence. "We" can also read as too presumptive, but I feel like it works in the case of processes the reader could volunteer to be part of. However, it must not be used to project emotions or experiences onto the reader.

For now, I've personally settled on "we" for most things (because the reader could hypothetically choose to follow along actively), but switching into "I" if I need to discuss something negative or a failing of my own. In other words, I would never project "a constant state of grief" on my readers – that I can only attribute to myself.

When I refer to something that cannot be experienced by myself, only by my readership (e.g. because it happens only to people who do not know where the article is going), I prefer "the reader" over "you", because while it might be true for the median reader, it might not be true for each and every individual reading.

I'm glad someone else also cares about this! I don't find it discussed very much.

-----

Here's a decent example of what I mean: https://entropicthoughts.com/packaging-perl-and-shell-for-ni...

(1) It starts out with "I" having trouble packaging – my readers are generally more intelligent and experienced than I am, so I won't assume they have the same trouble.

(2) Then we go into my experience, but phrased in a way where the reader could hypothetically follow along. Thus, I ask the reader to imagine "we" have a Perl script.

(3) Somewhere in the middle, the article refers to something that might be noticed by "the very attentive reader". I do not expect everyone to, not even the median reader, but I realise some readers might.

(4) The appendix contains a note in case "you" are very curious, because here I do address each and every reader individually.

By cik 2026-01-056:411 reply

Without knowing the author, I wonder if that's a natural construct in their native language. As I've moved from Canada, I find myself consciously having to check to see if I've written "I", or "one", given that my local language, places a preferred conjugation in the you imperative.

By nicbou 2026-01-056:44

Personally I found the writing style unpleasant, because people on LinkedIn write the same way. I associate it to a specific kind of low-value content.

In this case, the use of "we" is also funny, because the opening sentence is such an unusual take.

By cm2012 2026-01-0417:2822 reply

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

By Tagbert 2026-01-0417:364 reply

It can be at first until you get used to it. You can observe your surroundings, make up stories about what is happening. Ask yourself questions. Listen to yourself.

This is a bit like excercise. When you first start, 30 minutes of exercise can be torture as your is out of shape and not used to the effort. Keep doing it and it feels better and you feel better.

Work on becoming a source of thoughts rather than a consumer of thoughts.

By 2ap 2026-01-0420:457 reply

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), is almost meditative, and a welcome escape from the constant connection and pressures of being immediately available at work. Sounds like the writer achieves something similar in the coffee shop.

By tzone 2026-01-0418:404 reply

I think it depends on what counts as doing nothing. Every time I cut my hair, I sit in a chair for ~30minutes silently without doing anything. My barber knows I don't like small talk so he just cuts my hair and that's it, there is no conversation.

I would say it is very enjoyable 30 minutes every time I do it. I don't think anyone would describe that kind of experience as hard to do?

By vlod 2026-01-0422:283 reply

"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.

By unsungNovelty 2026-01-0418:00

It is. I did somewhere around ~10mins or something in my first try. Which I was told is very high for a first attempt. But it is indeed difficult. Like @dymk said, you work your way up.

Also, a lot of folks think it's easy to do. Until you try it, that is.

I also remember reading somewhere around the lines of handling the chaos in your-self. Or controlling the chaos within yourself.

And always thought this exercise showed what that is about. (Sorry, forgot the expression. Been a while. It's definitely more nicely put than the above.)

By FpUser 2026-01-0421:181 reply

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

I've done more than that. Summer time I often swim in open water up to 2 hour at once as one of the ways to stay fit. Obviously it becomes routine and not very entertaining. So I usually doing some high level software design work in my mind at this point, exploring some concepts, thinking business ideas etc. etc. So my body does monotonous work of not very high intensity and my brain is busy with everything else. Not board at all.

I once spent 1.5 hour standing in a church listening to a priest for more than an hour (funeral). Same thing I mentally solved the problem why some piece of my code did not work.

Without this ability I would go nuts. My brain always has to be busy with something. It is like a drug for me.

By epistasis 2026-01-051:51

I felt that for much of my life. Time without stimulation was, if not scary, at least a bit panic inducing. Learning to sit without stimulation, without any distractions from my worries, led to being able to realize that "hey, I'm OK, I don't even need those worries." Which led to handling the underlying pressures and stresses MUCH better, without panic, without stress, with a full clear mind. I could apply my full intellect to things that before were hard to deal with. It felt like a super power when I first started practicing sitting.

By dymk 2026-01-0417:531 reply

It starts like that. Work up to 30 minutes, start with 5. The mind has an uncanny ability to entertain itself when it’s bored but paying attention.

By astura 2026-01-0420:381 reply

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

Those of us over 40 have already had plenty of this in our lives, it used to be such a common part of life! Waiting for appointments, waiting for the bus, etc. before smartphones. My first job had two hours between lunch and dinner service. I only had about 15 minutes of work during that time, so it was hour plus of almost entirely idle time every shift.

By hansmayer 2026-01-0419:41

Then dont sit still for 30 mins - try doing it for 3 minutes at first. If you feel like it, repeat the next day with either the same or longer length. Or dont do it at all. If you do - think of it as a kind of a meditation, without the extra steps. Some isolation from sensory stimulation is good for your brain - there is growing evidence we are all over exposed to attention-robbing mechanisms of the digital world.

By anotherevan 2026-01-0423:121 reply

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.

By lifetimerubyist 2026-01-0418:251 reply

Some people just call this "meditation".

By abustamam 2026-01-056:03

I thought it was too, but when my daughter was born she had trouble regulating her temperature so I had to stay with her while she was under the warmer for an hour, then another hour swaddled in my arms. They didn't allow phones, so I got to spend two hours with her, no distraction. The time passed surprisingly quickly. I sang to her, I told her stories from my head.

Nowadays when I'm feeding her or napping her I admittedly do have a phone behind her head, but I'll always cherish those two hours where it was just us two.

By reg_dunlop 2026-01-0418:132 reply

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

By r721 2026-01-057:05

>People Prefer Electric Shocks to Being Alone With Their Thoughts

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/07/people-pr...

By amanaplanacanal 2026-01-0417:431 reply

When I was younger I used to visit a local zendo, and I think the meditation sessions were 40 minutes. It's definitely an experience. Very easy to fall asleep without external distractions. The idea was to just learn to concentrate on bodily sensations, skin, breathing, sound.

By yumraj 2026-01-0420:451 reply

Sounds like meditation to me.

By beAbU 2026-01-0512:45

Try rawdogging a train ride or short flight, and do nothing but take in the view. You might fool your body into accepting this state by actually doing something, but not really doing something.

By j45 2026-01-059:59

Solitude and once’s own company once learned is bliss.

The mind finds entirely new areas of stimulation when it’s not being distracted or purely having sensory experiences.

By jdkee 2026-01-056:01

That is because the monkey mind is trying to create a narrative where none exists in the moment.

By mrmuagi 2026-01-051:10

Enduring boredom is the antithesis of mindless doomscrolling.

By blitzar 2026-01-0511:00

Sounds like the morning standup for most people.

By epistasis 2026-01-051:46

A cafe near me specializes in pu-erh tea, and has a strict 'no electronic devices' policy. Very conducive to that sort of sitting challenge, or meditative practices in general.

When feeling too busy, I always make time to go to a sit at my local Vipassana center, spending an hour sitting actually frees up so much more time in my life that it's well worth it. Gandhi definitely had it right when he said "I have so much to accomplish today that I must meditate for two hours instead of one"

By Fnoord 2026-01-0514:25

Thanks for the perspective. I was looking for it in the comments.

The thing with a café is. OK, it exists. But it just isn't for me. I like being on my own, and you don't go to a public place for that. I got coffee at home (not as good as in a half decent café). If I really do need coffee on the go it is while travelling, and then I don't sit inside (no, not on a crowdy terrace either).

I could write you a post about the the unbearable joy of listening to hypnotic music while on a train or bus ride.

I could write a post about sitting stoned in a squat with everyone going to bed slowly but surely, and this girl still playing her guitar smiling friendly at me, and eventually guiding me to a place where I could sleep. Cause at this point, I had no clue where to go.

But in the end, it boils down to mindfulness and meditation.

By analog8374 2026-01-0421:11

I've done some sitting still and doing nothing. It's a deep subject. There's like a thousand things going on right now and you're reacting to all of them. And that reaction is reality.

By j45 2026-01-059:44

Solitude and stillness unlocks a completely different side of creativity and insight.

Too many folks scroll right past the opportunities.

By begueradj 2026-01-0419:18

When you sit in a café, even when you do nothing as the author said, you are still not alone because you are visually (looking at her, for example) and audibly (listening to them, for example) active. Like in any other public space, you are passively interacting with others, hence you are not "sitting alone".

By foobarbecue 2026-01-055:031 reply

> a 30min challenge to sit upright without doing anything in a chair challenge

Quakers call this "silent meeting."

By mdnahas 2026-01-0617:11

For those that don’t know, the Quakers are like Zen Buddhism met radical Protestant Christians in the 1600s. There is no creed, no minister/priest/leader.

We sit together quietly for 60 minutes. If someone feels inspired, they stand up and speak. Then they sit down and the Meeting continues in silence. Some Meetings are silent from start to finish; others have speakers the whole time.

While there is no creed, people often speak about truth, equality, peace, and simplicity. I found it when looking for a belief system to pass on to my kids, should I have some.

If you’re curious, try it some Sunday. It’s an interesting experience.

By hanklazard 2026-01-054:59

> Too many negative comments here.

On this post specifically or HN on the whole? ;)

By publicdebates 2026-01-0514:26

I wonder how many of them have read xkcd's Ten Thousand.

By dmead 2026-01-0420:46

[flagged]

By fuzzer371 2026-01-0419:06

[flagged]

By et-al 2026-01-0419:524 reply

> Too many negative comments here. This is just someone discovering something new and sharing it very excitedly.

Some of the negativity is because many people out there were used to this slower way of living only for capitalist techbros to optimize every waking moment everything and hasten the rat race.

So now the only people who can sit idly at a cafe would be those who've already have a few million in the bank. It's similar to the CEO goes to a yoga retreat in Bali (or Burning Man) trope to rediscover being part of society.

By wolframhempel 2026-01-059:193 reply

I used to work in investment banking in the city of London and later in Canary Wharf. I loved working in the city as it was a beautiful old place, people were very social and having 2-3 hour boozy lunches with someone who you might do business with one day wasn't a rarity (mind you, I moved out before covid, I understand things have changed quite a bit).

Then I switched jobs and ended up in Canary Wharf. For those who don't know it, Canary Wharf is a newly built finance district in the London Docklands. If you've been to Singapore, Dubai, La Defense in Paris or Songdo in Korea, you know the kind of place. Everything is clean, new, modern. Everything has 90 degree angles. Everything has cameras, security guards and cleaning stuff. What it doesn't have is any resemblance of a real city, any organicity or soul.

I hated it. Every morning I saw the streams of suite dressed worker drones pouring from the tube directly into their office towers (Canary Wharf has a huge underground shopping mall/railway station that allows you to go from the subway directly into your office without ever seeing the sun).

I was unhappy. So I did similar things to the OP. I got up earlier and walked there. (I lived in Mile End). It was a nice walk along the canal for a while and then a not so nice walk through smog and traffic, but I didn't mind. I took my lunch outside on the remaining docks. And finally, I got up so early that I arrived an hour before work began.

I spent this hour in a Cafe. Alone. Having breakfast. I loved this hour. I sat there, as the only one not rushing in, getting their "strong capo", beeping their card against the reader and rushing out. I observed the grey and black dressed stream of people. I day dreamed.

It helped - for a while. It was a band aid before I left London all together and moved to Berlin. But most of all, it is a uniquely calm and joyful experience. It decelerates you. The boheme in Paris or Prague has long figured this out. Sit in a cafe. Enjoy a coffee or a glass of wine. Look at people. Daydream. Reflect, be enough - there's a lot to it.

By davzie 2026-01-0510:002 reply

You should do more writing! I really enjoyed this and the way you write!

By dav43 2026-01-0512:56

Singapore to a tea. Spooky that I had a similar path, Sydney -> HK -> New York -> Singapore. Crescendo-ing up to New York, then off a cliff into a full blow school-like world (but great trains).

By PoignardAzur 2026-01-0617:23

I'm starting to think I'm the only person in the world who loves La Défense.

By delis-thumbs-7e 2026-01-0416:1210 reply

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 way of talking to an actual human being). People used to do this y’know? Back then.

By moooo99 2026-01-0416:3315 reply

> I think the important part is leaving your phone and other devices home.

The annoying part is that this becomes increasingly difficult to impossible. For example, I can't use public transport without my phone anymore, because my ticket is bound to my phone and the provider does not issue paper tickets or smartcards anymore.

Less severe but equally frustrating, many restaurants choose to use QR codes for menus rather than printing them onto a sheet of paper or writing them to the wall.

I love leaving my phone behind, primarily because I am in the "we're entertaining ourselves to death" crowd considering I essentially grew up with mobile phones already. But our environment is increasingly build on the assumption that we carry a smartphone with us at any given time.

By lanfeust6 2026-01-0417:11

I often would go to local coffee shops with a book and journal. Leaving a device at home has nothing to do with it.

One of the reasons I don't see much value-added from meditation is that it seems like a ritualistic wrapper around something I already do and value: clearing one's head, quiet time without consuming visual stimulus and without brooding. We are prone to bombarding ourselves constantly and wonder why we're fatigued partway through the day.

I like to reserve the "thinking" component to journaling time, as that seems to help organize thoughts. Or else, do it while walking.

By PapstJL4U 2026-01-0514:01

From the blog

>It’s contradictory to sit alone in a café. It’s against the reason cafés exist.

I had the same feeling as you. Why is it weird to do something alone ? - and like you I thought this must be an American thing. Mostly, because stuff like "eating out alone" or "going to the movies alone" was describe as weird by American authors before.

Sure, it's close to impossible to not "auto-socialize", when you are alone. It's one of the reason I like to do things alone. Either being a regular to the cafe/restaurant host or you get into contact with other people,

By stronglikedan 2026-01-0516:51

> why sitting alone in a café makes you a weirdo

It doesn't. That was pure projection on the author's part.

By manicennui 2026-01-0423:531 reply

It's really just people in the suburbs and smaller cities. Doing things alone is completely normal in a city like Chicago or NY.

By barnabee 2026-01-0510:59

I enjoyed the post as a whole, there’s joy in someone discovering and sharing pleasure in something you enjoy that’s new to them.

But yeah, I found the whole intro section a bit confusing because it’s just extremely common to find people enjoying an hour alone at a café here and certainly not “against the reasons cafès exist”.

By gniv 2026-01-0418:214 reply

> (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.

By VLM 2026-01-0417:005 reply

Its a social class thing. Homeless people sit alone, especially the crazy ones.

No brand new iphone or new macbook means poverty which is usually not cool.

It blows peoples minds if you read a book. Not a college textbook but something for fun. Homeless people don't read so they get confused.

Its like riding the bus. There's nothing wrong with public transit, its just that its somewhere warm for poor homeless people to sit all winter, so its not very cool.

By coolThingsFirst 2026-01-0420:123 reply

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.