Living with strangers

A hot new bombshell enters the villa

The first thing I saw was a buff, damp blonde man in a bath towel.

I was standing in the hallway of my new home in Lisbon. It was only 10am but I was already haggard from a day of travel and the Olympian effort of hauling my suitcase up several flights of stairs. The man was exiting the bathroom in a swirl of steam just as I reached to unlock my bedroom door. We nearly collided. “Oh, sorry,” he said, seeming just as startled to see me. “And welcome!” As he disappeared into the room across from mine, I wondered what I’d gotten myself into.¹

I’d arrived in Lisbon that morning. I was desperately hungover and sleep-deprived after a 3am wake-up call in Venice (must stop doing that). I emerged from the airport into the bright Portugal sun in the late morning. I was dressed all wrong, layered in my thickest clothing because my suitcase was already at maximum capacity. I called a Bolt and sat in the backseat sweating and wondering if I’d made a terrible mistake. 

We snaked through the area from the airport to the city center where I was staying. Everything looked menacing. I glimpsed the city up on a hill and realized that I was truly alone for the first time on this trip.

How ridiculous, I thought, to have brought my loneliness here.

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In Nashville, I’d been feeling isolated. I was living alone and working from home. Combine the actual workday (8 hours), the various grooming/cleaning/cooking tasks required to sustain life (2-4 hours), my elaborate pre-sleep routine (2 hours), time spent actually sleeping (8 hours), and my equally elaborate morning routine (2 hours) and it was very possible for me to go an entire day without seeing another human.

Don’t get me wrong: I love solitude. A little too much, some² might say. But I was tipping dangerously into hermit territory. My mood had darkened noticeably. I was also reading a lot of Buddhist teachings about our cosmic impermanence around that time. This probably didn’t help.

The problem of my loneliness was part personal (introvert with a deep need for time alone), part societal (America’s forced atomization by car-centric cities, nuclear families, and a general manifesto of independence and self-reliance), and part life stage.

Most of the people I knew in Nashville were in the process of settling down. I attended family cookouts, housewarming parties, and baby showers. I talked to my friends about their wedding plans and home renovations and ovulation schedules. I was genuinely happy for all of them. That reads like it’s being said through gritted teeth, but I swear it’s true! Still, it was strange to watch all my friends march toward stability when I was sprinting in the opposite direction. A reversal of the usual sequence: from married to single, from homeowner to leaseless, from firmly planted in Nashville to location TBD. From settled to intentionally un-settling.

It was June 2022 when I made the decision to live abroad. I was halfway through the year and I’d decided to map out the next 12 months: a Year in the Life of Lane³. It was an exercise in imagination. What would I do if I could do anything? I have a voice note of myself talking it through and it’s mostly just long periods of silence with incessant birdsong in the background.

It’s been surprisingly difficult for me to imagine a life that doesn’t follow that traditional track. I don’t have a lot of examples of it around me. Though my friends and family have been endlessly supportive, I could tell they didn’t quite understand the pull. I asked my mom if she’d ever felt that desire to uproot herself and see the world. 

“Oh Lane,” she said. “We don’t need to travel. We’ve been to Busch Gardens."

I needed some more relevant examples to pull from. I wanted to be around like-minded people who had not only felt that pull, but made the leap. I wanted to witness myself in new places and situations, to find out what I’d do and who I’d become. I wanted new ideas about what life could look like. 

All these factors collided with me making the strangest decision of the whole journey: to move to Europe and live with 20+ strangers.

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Before this trip, I barely even liked talking with strangers. I eyed them with suspicion. I assumed malevolence. I did not strike up small talk with people. I did not chat with my seatmates on the airplane. If we accidentally made eye contact in a public place, I can guarantee you it wouldn’t be happening a second time. This is fundamentally a fear of rejection, translated into vigilance and self-protection, disguised as disinterest. I also think this is why I’m so bad at flirting.

Traveling solo is an inherently solitary activity, which is what I love about it. But I knew my own tendencies: I would overindulge in solitude to the point of isolation and loneliness. What if instead I forced myself into the slight discomfort of close community? I was prototyping my life, after all. This was an experiment. If I hated it, I could always change my mind.

I found Outsite through a friend at work. It’s a network of homes and buildings throughout the world that are converted into co-living and co-working spaces. It would put me smack-dab in the middle of community, living in close proximity with a rotating cast of strangers — the opposite of my isolated existence in Nashville. 

I hit “Book Now” on a month-long stay in Lisbon. 

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That first day in Lisbon, the driver deposited me at my building, one in a long row on the downtown strip in Cais do Sodre. I had the distinct feeling that I’d walked into an upscale college dorm. It had high ceilings and wood floors with white walls. An entryway led to the shared living room and kitchen, which was empty now but smelled like recently brewed coffee. 

I found my room, dodging the nearly-nude flatmate on the way in. It was light and bright, with a low bed, and a balcony that opened up onto the street in front of the building dotted with bars and sidewalk cafes. Outside, there were hordes of beautiful, well-dressed young people grouped together on the sidewalks, familiar and laughing. I felt that deep pang of loneliness again, which appeared to have followed me from Nashville, four thousand miles and across an ocean.

Damn it.

That night, I pulled myself together and joined a dinner that had been organized in the Outsite WhatsApp group. I knew no one. When I got there, I introduced myself with such clumsy awkwardness, you’d think I had never interacted with another human before. My new flatmates either didn’t notice or politely ignored it and welcomed me anyway.

As we talked over dinner, what had seemed outlandish in Nashville was standard-issue here: the lawyer from the Netherlands who had quit his job to take college courses in philosophy and dystopian literature, the Russian graphic designer who’d been traveling solo for nearly a decade, the visual artist in her 60s who still went dancing at beach clubs every night. Here was an entire group of people who thought like me. Or, even better, thought completely differently than me and expanded my sense of what was possible.

We all went out for dinner again the next night and the next. That weekend, we rented a van and went to the beach together. The next week, a champagne boat cruise. Rapidly, strangers turned into friends. There wasn’t a single day that passed without an invitation to morning brunch, afternoon coffee, sunset drinks, a dinner at 10pm (“22h” as I learned to say), or a weekend trip somewhere. 

To my great surprise, I loved it. Co-working downstairs. Casual run-ins in the kitchen while we made coffee or tea. A tutorial on the finicky gas burner. The simple act of having small, warm interactions with people throughout the day had a marked impact on my happiness and energy levels. Even the little indignities of co-living, like shared bathrooms and a single dedicated shelf in the fridge, didn’t bother me. I loved the fun and friction and spontaneity of close community. I loved the person it transformed me into: looser, more playful, more willing to say yes. Less self-protective and more open to connection.

And I was right: Outsite was kind of like a college dorm, in the best ways. Back home, I’d sometimes felt like everyone already had their circles cemented and were no longer accepting applications for newcomers. But here, everyone was wide-open to the possibility of new friendships and connections in a way I hadn’t experienced since college. I was startled by the generous ease with which conversation, invitations, and kindness were offered up. It was a self-selecting group, of course. At some point, everyone here had made the same decision as me: to live with strangers, to plant themselves in the messiness of community, to experiment with new ways of living. 

On one of my last nights in Lisbon, I walked by the river with a new friend and — flagging this as the most quintessentially “college” part of the entire essay — we discussed the idea of soulmates. Not just romantic soulmates, but all the people you meet briefly and make a deep connection with, fully aware you may never see them again.

“I don’t think the length of a relationship is what makes it a success or failure,” he said. “Something isn’t less meaningful just because it’s temporary.”⁴

Living with strangers has given me a deep appreciation for the magical and ephemeral nature of connection. Co-living means people come in and out of your life often. This happens in real life too, but the turnover is much higher when traveling. I used to think that if something wasn’t going to lead to a long-lasting, lifetime bond, it wasn’t worth the risk of potential rejection. I closed myself off to those small and serendipitous moments of connection, then I wondered why my world felt so small and gray. Now I understand that permanence isn’t the goal.⁵ The experience of existing in community with others, even for a short time, is itself transformative.

Since it wouldn’t be my newsletter without a quote from bell hooks on the subject:

“Enjoying the benefits of living and loving in a community empowers us to meet strangers without fear and extend to them the gift of openness and recognition. Just by speaking to a stranger, acknowledging their presence on the planet, we make a connection. We can begin the process of making community by sharing a smile, a warm greeting, a bit of conversation, by doing a kind deed, or by acknowledging kindness offered us.”

I love the phrase “making community” — not just the having of it, but the continual creation of it. Before, I thought community would come to me fully formed. I would slot in like a puzzle piece just as soon as I found the right one. But my view on it has changed after the experience of living with strangers. Community isn’t something that exists in a static form, like a secret society you’re waiting to be given the keys to. It’s something you make, actively and daily, alongside others. It’s accessible through a kind word, an extended invitation, or a shared grudge against the broken washing machine.

Now that I’ve discovered this, it feels a bit like a magic trick. I’m no longer searching for a cure to my loneliness; I carry it with me.

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My last night in Lisbon, after a month of living there, I was wrapping up my final work call at 8pm when I heard an uncharacteristic roar of noise coming from outside of my door. I walked out of my room, still in my chaotic work-from-home outfit (bike shorts on bottom, button-down shirt on top) and found the living room transformed into a massive, glowing dinner party. 

The table overflowed with a spread of cheese, bread, fruit, tinned fish, wine — Portuguese staples. They joked that they’d put the celebration together just for me, as a send-off for my last night in town, but it was better than that: a joyful group gathering, no excuse needed. 

People from every floor of the building were crammed into our living room, eating and drinking and laughing. My roommate paraded out of the kitchen with a platter of ginger-garlic chicken wings, to great fanfare. I talked to an Austrian man about being funny in a foreign language. I met, of all people, a guy who had also come to Lisbon from Nashville. We drank vinho verde out of mugs when the wine glasses ran out. When it got too hot inside, we piled onto the tiny balcony for fresh air, all squeezed in next to my clothes drying on the line. 

I stayed out until 3am, when I had to catch a flight to my next destination (really must stop doing that).

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Little obsessions

• My current hyper-fixation playlist: lane in europe ✈️ Listen, the place dictates the playlist, and I am merely a medium for the music. I wanted this to be all French music from the 1960s, but it ended up mostly Charli XCX, Samia, Christine and the Queens (French!), and Caroline Polachek. Which feels exactly right.

• Timeshifter: I used this (free!) app to beat jet lag upon my arrival to Europe. For days before my departure and after my arrival, it coached me hour-by-hour about when to get sunlight, when to caffeinate, when to wake up, and when to go to sleep. I think it helped! Mostly, I just love being bossed around.

• Tevas: I packed an inadvisable number of shoes for this trip (5) and somehow have managed to acquire even more pairs (2 and counting) over the course of my time here. One my new acquisitions was a pair of Tevas which have been 🤌 for everything from rocky beaches to waterfall chasing to morning croissant runs. I fear I’m coming around to functional footwear.

• Outsite: I’ve genuinely loved my experiences at Outsites across Europe (currently on my third, here in France), for all the reasons I mentioned above, plus the ease of booking and reliable work setup. This is a referral link that gets you $50 off a membership. Let me know if you want to meet up at one — maybe Outsite Hawaii?

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I’m sure this will be the first of many dispatches about my spring abroad. I promise to come back more insufferable than ever!

If you want to join me on my next trip, reply to this email with your preferred destination and dates because I’m in. And if you have any tips on absconding to international waters in order to dodge European visa requirements…inquiring minds want to know.

Love,

Lane 💋

1. For those hoping that this was a romantic-comedy-level meet cute, I must inform you that this man will not be making another appearance in the story, save for him organizing a late-night party boat cruise which I dropped out of at the last minute for personal reasons (my 10pm bedtime)

2. Namely, my therapist and my exes

3. A friend recently told me: “I wish I loved anything as much as you love spreadsheets.”

4. It’s giving Before Sunrise (1995)

5. Maybe the Buddhists were on to something here?