I’m currently sitting in an Airbnb in Quebec City planning my solo New Year’s Eve while tucked under blankets because it is -29°F outside. I know absolutely no one in this city, and that is part of the point: I came here to be alone.
Who would want to be alone New Year’s Eve? Correction: who would want to be a 7-hour, 430-mile drive away from any familiar face, alone, in a strange city, on New Year’s Eve? The answer is me. Maybe for some of you the answer is a resounding Me too. We are people who crave change and adventure, who spend most of our days in a holding pattern while our hearts beat with wild blood.
No one knows me in this city — and that frees me from the “normalcy” of the everyday me. While the families I meet on the Plains of Abraham hurry along to the Citadelle, bundled up with ski masks and snow pants, I plunge into the wind and the snow. I am as wild as the weather.
And while perhaps most people are spending time together on this night — attending parties, going clubbing, laughing, joking, making merry — I am forging my attitude for 2018: empowered and in control.
If I can drive here, if I can make this trip a reality, then I can achieve my dreams.