I bought myself a front-row seat and nobody died

Originally shared in Tuesday Notes on October 13, 2026.

I’m back after a short break for exams and, well, life. And fittingly, the story I want to share today started four years ago this week, on 12 October 2022.

I’d bought the tickets weeks earlier, front row, for Cirque du Soleil’s Luzia, and I bought them for myself, knowing from the start I’d be going alone.

The anxiety started while I was getting ready. Not because of the show. Because of the sitting there alone, in public, in a crowd, for the first time in my life.

I’d done the movies alone before, but that’s different. The lights go down and nobody can really see you. This was front row, fully lit, a crowd of people who could all see exactly one seat with no one next to it.

Walking in on my own felt crazy and exciting at the same time. Sitting there alone felt scary in a different way. Usually you talk to whoever you’re with while you wait. Alone, you just sit there, “awkwardly,” and wait. I’d timed my arrival like a small military operation, late enough not to be sitting there forever, early enough not to be rushing to my seat. My heart was pounding. I talked myself through it.

A man next to me started chatting before the show began. He was there with his family. He asked if I was press. I was so surprised by the question I almost laughed. When I said no, he looked genuinely confused, like there had to be some explanation for a woman sitting there by herself. So I told him the truth, that I’d come alone because my friends had been busy.

What struck me afterward wasn’t the question. It was that his first guess was one I would never have come up with. And if press was what came to his mind, there were probably dozens of other explanations people could reach for, most of them perfectly ordinary. In my own head, the whole time I was getting ready, there had only ever been one story available to me: poor her, nobody wants to be here with her.

The show itself was extraordinary. I sat in complete awe for the entire thing. I left with a huge smile on my face and a kind of pride I hadn’t expected, proud that I’d dared to do it, and proud that I’d survived it. The thought of something scary is almost always scarier than the thing itself.

The thought of something scary is almost always scarier than the thing itself.

There’s research that backs up exactly that gap. Rebecca Ratner and Rebecca Hamilton, who study consumer behavior, found that people routinely skip activities they’d genuinely enjoy simply because they’d have to do them alone, convinced other people will judge the empty seat beside them. When people went anyway, they consistently reported enjoying themselves just as much as if they’d had company. The dread was never really about the event. It lived entirely in the hour before it.

Four days later I tested that theory again, on a bigger stage. I hiked alone to Restaurant Aescher Wildkirchen for the first time, a place built into a cliff face I’d wanted to see for a while. Indian summer, full sun, music in my ears, completely in my own bubble the whole way up. Sitting at the restaurant alone felt strange again, the same way the theater had, and again it turned out to be far less bad than the version I’d built in my head.

I think I kept doing this for a few reasons. To push myself outside my comfort zone. To stop waiting for someone else’s calendar to line up before I let myself see or do something I actually wanted. And underneath both of those, something quieter. A few months earlier my last relationship had ended and I’d moved back in with my parents.

Taking myself out became a way of treating myself the way I might have waited for a partner to treat me. It turned out to be one of the best ways I’ve found to learn what I actually love, and what I expect from any relationship. Setting the standard for how I date myself ended up setting the standard for how I let anyone else treat me too.

Setting the standard for how I date myself ended up setting the standard for how I let anyone else treat me too.

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Brain snack:

If you read the cognitive bias series in May, you’ve met the spotlight effect. This is its cousin.

In the same research, Ratner and Hamilton found that what put people off wasn’t the activity itself, it was how public it was. People were far happier to watch a movie alone at home than in a cinema, and the ones who did go alone tended to pick the quieter showtimes. Doing something alone also felt more acceptable when it had a practical purpose, like running errands or working from a café.

That explains a lot. A laptop on a café table gives you a reason to be there. A front-row seat with no one beside you means you’re there simply because you wanted to be. That’s the part that feels exposed, and it’s also the part worth practicing.

What’s something you’ve talked yourself out of doing alone that you actually wanted to do?

And this week, take yourself on one small solo date. A coffee, a museum, a walk somewhere you’ve been meaning to go. Nothing big, just one thing you’d normally wait for company to do.

Much love, Claudia ✨