Travel for STOICs: Empowering the Solo Traveler Who is Obsessive, Introverted, and Compulsive
by Eva Rome
Do you have an obsessive-compulsive personality? Is the idea of traveling nothing more than that: an idea? Does traveling strike you as a terrifying prospect? O-Cs can be way too circumscribed and self-regulated to accomplish the planning, get on the planes, find our accommodations at our destinations, and actually enjoy the process. Fold in introversion and you’ve got a crippling combination. Solo travel? Forget it.
Want to take the anxiety out of
solo travel?
Travel for STOICs is both a travel book and a survival manual, but of a different sort. It’s not about which great restaurants to patronize or what sites are a must-see in a given place; it’s about how to master solo travel challenges that happen in between those activities while successfully managing your O-C and introverted self. This book is especially for the STOIC—the Solo Traveler: Obsessive, Introverted, Compulsive—and for those who care about our well-being and happiness. With advice from the Classical world’s Stoic triumvirate: Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius (plus author and fellow STOIC Eva Rome), you will be empowered to experience the world with confidence and calm!
WATCH THE VIDEO
“Don’t explain your philosophy,
embody it. Don’t seek to have events
happen as you wish, but wish them
to happen as they do happen,
and all will be well with you.
—Epictetus,
1st Century CE Stoic Philosopher”
What It Means (WHIM) is a collection of essays that examines how myth, symbol, and archetype manifest in everyday American life in the early third millennium. WHIM was written for readers interested in history, communication, language, human behavior, philosophy, anthropology, and cultural studies, and is also intended to be a time capsule text for future readers curious about life back in the CE 2,000s. From the not too distant future to the end of the twenty-first century and beyond, What It Means will be a source for readers to gain insights into, what will likely seem to them, the peculiarities of an earlier time.
From generation to generation, the world’s myths, symbols, and archetypes express their timeless qualities in compelling and uniquely contemporary ways, and What It Means interprets and illuminates this phenomenon for today. Included in the WHIM collection are essays on topics such as “The Roller Coaster Ride as Aristotelian Narrative,” “Indoor Skydiving and Dreams of Flying,” “Fidget Spinners,” “Car Wash as Surrogate Purification Ritual,” and “Acoustic Weapons.” What It Means shows that ancient stories, archetypes, symbols, and ideas can all be found in the contemporary, providing (at least a few of) the answers to our sometimes confusing, sometimes chaotic existence.
What it means
is intended to be a time capsule text. For those who enjoy burying objects for future discovery, you may purchase WHIM along with an aLOKSAK element-proof, military-grade protective bag. After reading WHIM, please place the book in its protective bag and consider burying it in a location meaningful to you. If you’re remodeling your house or place of business, install WHIM in a wall, under some floorboards, or in the ceiling. Bury it in your backyard or along a favorite hike. And even though the aLOKSAK is waterproof to two hundred feet, please resist the temptation to consign WHIM to a body of water. If your copy of the book did not come with a bag, for a small fee you can order one, including instructions for burying (click the ORDER tab). Since time capsules tend to get lost, please provide GPS coordinates of the book’s burial site so that a record may be kept of all of WHIM’s time capsule locations. Send these coordinates to bluemorphopress.nm@gmail.com.
Watch the video of the first time capsule burial.
What It Means is available for purchase as a paperback and as a digital book.
Visit your favorite online book retailer to buy your copy.
Not all septuagenarians become devoted grandparents, contented gardeners, or avid pickleball players, some still crave risk and adventure. Eva Rome enters her eighth decade and rejects her comfortable, semiretired life, questing for meaning beyond the mainstream. In the midst of Covid, she sells her home and hits the road to search for Location X, a place that speaks to who she is. Her investigations take her around the globe, starting in São Paulo, Brazil, on a street named for Diogenes, the Greek cynic who carried a lantern around Athens, shoving it into his fellow citizens’ faces and declaring, “I’m looking for a man.” Eva holds her own lantern up to the world and proclaims, “I’m looking for a place.” Her investigations take her from São Paulo to Mexico to Uncertain, Texas, to retirement hot spots in Costa Rica and Panamá, Spain, Italy, and Portugal. Archangel Michael, whom she learns is her guardian spirit, makes appearances and offers guidance.
On a pirate's map, X marks the spot where treasure is buried, and finding X was the focus of her process: pinpointing that singular location that said, this is where the next phase of my life will unfold. From the armchair globetrotter to the boomer looking for a soft landing in paradise, readers will recognize their unrealized relocation dreams in this compilation of humorous travel exploits and perhaps be prompted to take on their own new adventures.
Location X: A Quest for Place is available for purchase as a paperback
and as a digital book. Visit your favorite online book retailer
to buy your copy.
Our Childhood Homes is a collection of personal reflections on one’s original home and its lifelong impact. In 2005, Laurie McDonald started collecting childhood home stories and decided to revive the project in 2020. Originally conceived as a book, OCH is now in production as a blog and possible podcast. Laurie asked her childhood friend Susan Matthews to partner with her, and we would like to invite anyone who is interested in the idea to contribute your own story and to invite your friends and family to contribute theirs.
The OCH blog is devoted exclusively to these stories and accompanying photos of childhood homes. There are two ways you can contribute: either by writing your own story, or by having one of us interview you and transcribe and edit the conversation. It’s your choice. Suggested length is between 1,000 and 3,000 words.
Stories featured in the OCH blog will show the unique qualities that comprise our varied notions and early memories of home. Our childhood homes were sometimes places of security and happiness, and other times not. They were, and still remain, the spaces that shaped our identities; contemplating them conjures old dreams, recollections, nightmares, triumphs, disappointments, and a powerful sense of place that is as individualistic as we are.
If you are interested in contributing a story, please contact us at childhoodhomestories@gmail.com.
For paperback or digital versions of Travel For STOICs, What It Means, and Location X,
please visit your favorite online book retailer.
All text, photography, video, and graphic design, copyright Laurie McDonald.
Travel For STOICs book cover design by Jean-Manuel Duvivier.
What It Means book cover by Laurie McDonald.
Location X: A Quest for Place book cover by Andy Bridge.
