{"id":9516,"date":"2015-01-14T18:16:21","date_gmt":"2015-01-14T23:16:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=9516"},"modified":"2015-01-21T17:44:33","modified_gmt":"2015-01-21T22:44:33","slug":"solo-travel-allows-you-to-see-the-world-on-your-own-terms-with-unexpected-souvenirs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/solo-travel-allows-you-to-see-the-world-on-your-own-terms-with-unexpected-souvenirs\/","title":{"rendered":"Solo travel allows you to see the world on your own terms \u2013 with unexpected souvenirs"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Janice Waugh was bitten by the travel bug at a very early age.<\/p>\n

With a life-long passion for seeing the world, however, in 2006 she had to recalibrate her lifestyle.<\/p>\n

After her husband died that year, Ms. Waugh entered what she describes as a \u201csignificant period of mourning\u201d which ebbed and flowed for the next two years. But, eventually she decided it was time to get back to her old self, but having to come to grips with the realities of being a \u201csolo traveller.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI picked up the laptop and Google \u2018solo travel\u2019,\u201d says Ms. Waugh. \u201cWhat was there was very commercial, full of spammy ads, and there was some stuff there that was more about hooking people up, so I wanted to give a voice to this. I have been a writer my entire life, so I just decided to be that voice and sure enough it took off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms. Waugh brings this voice to the Aurora Public Library next Wednesday, January 21 at 7 p.m. to share the \u201cSix Things You Absolutely Must Know About Solo Travel.\u201d The author of The Solo Traveler\u2019s Handbook will share tips on how to awaken one\u2019s sense of adventure and reveal your own resilience while discovering yourself and the world at the same time.<\/p>\n

In a Choose Your Own Adventure-style talk, attendees of the talk will get to choose which aspects of solo travel Ms. Waugh focuses on and whichever direction they ultimately decide to travel on Wednesday, there will be plenty of information interwoven with personal stories of her own adventures.
\n\u201cTravel is becoming more and more popular and solo travel in particular is becoming more and more popular,\u201d she says. \u201cPeople are not hanging around waiting for friends and family, or partners, and they are going off on their own.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the popularity of solo travel has increased, so too has Ms. Waugh\u2019s speaking schedule. While she isn\u2019t complaining by any stretch of the imagination, she says it is \u201cinteresting\u201d to speculate just why solo travel is on the rise.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne aspect is the aging population,\u201d she opines. \u201cThere are a lot of women and men who have been left without a partner, whether it is by divorce or by loss. You have those independent people and they also have means. With the younger generation, when you think of Gen X and Gen Y, they have so much confidence about their ability in the world that many don\u2019t hesitate to go off by themselves, and sometimes for very long trips. <\/p>\n

\u201cThen there is also the fact of those in between. We are in a world now where more adults are unmarried than married, whether that is because of sequential monogamous relationships or not, but you have these gap periods where people will go off. Then there are people who have experienced older travel, they do connect and have a partner again in life, but they will still travel by themselves on occasion. Demographic shifts in terms of the aging population, more people being unmarried than married, the confidence in that Gen X and Gen Y have been raised on their position in the world all play a big factor and role.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Ms. Waugh decided to be a voice for solo travel, she discovered there was truly a niche out there unfilled by online spam and hookup sites, and it is a niche that has since continued to grow. She has seen her blog grow by leaps and bounds with participants coming into the forum from all over the world to say her writings have given them the confidence to go out and see the world on their own, and on their own terms. But, she often hears from people lacking that certain confidence.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are nervous,\u201d she says. \u201cThey are nervous about being responsible for things themselves and they are nervous about their safety. That is why I try to allay those fears. The counterbalance of those fears, what people discover and the trend that I get back all the time from people is that by taking this on themselves, being responsible for all the planning and navigating, negotiating deals \u2013 and even how to buy a bus ticket is a negotiation when you\u2019re in a foreign country \u2013 by doing these things yourself you get such a surge of confidence.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt really is life-changing and people carry that home with them. It is one of those unexpected souvenirs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Solo Travel: Six Things You Absolutely Must Know takes place next Wednesday, January 21 from 7 \u2013 8.30 p.m. in the Magna Room of the Aurora Public Library. For more information, contact the Adult Information Desk at 905-727-9494 x275.<\/em><\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Janice Waugh was bitten by the travel bug at a very early age.<\/p>\n

With a life-long passion for seeing the world, however, in 2006 she had to recalibrate her lifestyle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":9517,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/2015-01-15-17.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-2tu","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-09 20:38:38","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}