Weekender #245

🤝 How to resolve workplace conflict when emotions are running high.

🫶 Tired from work? How to spot it and recover.

📚 What everyone’s actually reading this summer, ranked across 25 lists.

🍋 A low-effort summer dinner party your friends will think took hour

I love to travel, but I’ve never done it alone. Every stamp in my passport came with company: girlfriends, a partner, family. There’s always been someone in the next seat.

I’ve envied how easily men seem to just “go backpacking,” no safety math required. I know women who travel solo all the time and come back glowing. My real obstacle is simpler: my Mexican mother would absolutely kill me if I told her I was going abroad by myself 🤣.

Jokes aside, I want my own Eat Pray Love. My feed keeps serving me women who actually did it: @theblondeabroad (Kiersten Rich), @bemytravelmuse (Kristin Addis), @adventurouskate, and @solowithsav (Savanna Crowell), who show the lonely dinners and lost-in-a-new-city moments right next to the gorgeous ones. A few of my own girlfriends have gone too. Every one of them came back more sure of herself.

So whether you book the trip or just want to know you could, here’s the plan I’ve been building.

Start somewhere built for it.

Where you go changes everything, especially the first time. Some places are simply easier to navigate alone: low crime, reliable public transit, widely spoken English, and a culture where a woman eating dinner or wandering a museum by herself is completely normal.

The destinations that rank safest for solo women right now are a smart shortlist to start from. Pick the one that lets you ease in. Your first trip doesn’t have to prove anything.

Vet the neighborhood, not just the listing.

This is the step most people skip, and it matters more than the hotel. A stunning listing in a remote or sketchy area is not a deal. Before you book, search the neighborhood name plus “safe for tourists” and read recent reviews.

Drop the address into Google Maps Street View and look around: is it well-lit, walkable, and near cafes and shops, or are you depending on getting back alone late at night?

Favor central areas with steady foot traffic, read reviews from other solo women when you can find them, and on Airbnb trust a superhost with hundreds of reviews over a new listing with three. For hotels, a 24-hour front desk is worth the extra few dollars.

Let tech do the heavy lifting.

A few setups make the biggest difference. Share your live location with someone back home, send your itinerary and accommodation details before you go, and set a check-in rhythm so someone always roughly knows where you are.

Use ride-hailing apps like Uber, Bolt, or Grab instead of flagging street taxis, so every ride comes with a tracked route, a set price, and a record of your driver. Get an eSIM or local SIM so you always have data to pull up a map, call a ride, or reach someone the second you need to.

And keep backups of your documents: photos of your passport, a couple of printed copies, and a spare card stashed separately from your wallet.

Build a few quiet habits.

Walk like you know where you’re going, even when you don’t, and step into a shop to check your map instead of freezing on a corner with your phone out. Trust your gut: if a person or place feels off, you’re allowed to leave, say no, or invent an excuse. You owe strangers nothing.

Keep “I’m meeting friends later” in your back pocket rather than advertising that you’re alone. Stay mindful with alcohol, watch your drink, and know how you’re getting home before you head out.

Give yourself a soft landing too: book a reliable first night and arrange your airport transfer in advance, so you’re not decoding a new city while jet-lagged and dragging luggage.

Ease in with a group.

Solo doesn’t have to mean alone the whole time. Plenty of women do a hybrid: a small-group women’s trip for part of it, with solo days tacked on before or after.

You get the independence and a built-in safety net. Companies are built for exactly this, including the Solo Female Traveler Network, AdventureWomen, Solo Female Travelers Tours, and EF Go Ahead Tours, which run women-only itineraries with the logistics handled.

For a first trip, that can be the difference between talking yourself out of it and actually going.

Just start where you are.

You don’t have to book a flight tomorrow. Follow a few of those creators. Price out the one destination that won’t leave your head.

Take a solo weekend a few hours from home before you ever touch your passport. The door is open, and you’re more ready to walk through it than that nervous voice (or your mom) wants you to believe.

Thania (TA Content Mgr)

Be honest about how much of your Excel workflow is still manual just because that is how you first learned it. Dragging formulas down by hand. Cleaning columns one at a time. Re-checking everything because one wrong cell breaks the whole sheet.

Most of us learned Excel by Googling, copying a formula, and hoping it held.

Miss Excel (Kat Norton) is hosting a free 60-minute class on the shortcuts and automations most of us were never taught, the kind that make you faster and a lot more confident when someone needs numbers “real quick.”

You’ll learn how to:

• clean messy data in minutes
• use formulas that actually save time
• build simple reports and pivots
• automate the tasks you repeat every week
• move at keyboard-shortcut speed

If Excel shows up in your job even occasionally, this pays for itself the first time you use it.

👉 Save your spot in the free class.

📖 Read: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

After a 13-year-old Theo Decker miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother, he clings to a small, mysteriously captivating painting that pulls him into a wealthy and insular art community. An old-fashioned story of loss, obsession, and self-invention that earned its “stay-up-all-night-and-tell-all-your-friends” reputation.

📺 Watch: Big Mistakes on Netflix

Blackmailed into working for some very dangerous people, two deeply incapable siblings become the most disorganized duo in organized crime. Daniel Levy and Taylor Ortega’s sibling dynamic is the funny, well-paced heart of it.

🎧 Listen: Wuthering Heights by Charli XCX

With Wuthering Heights out this year (and finally on HBO Max), it’s fitting to spotlight Charli’s album of the same name. More cinematic than her usual, with lush strings and orchestral moments that fit the classic novel.

You keep saying you’ll take a real trip. Then the tabs pile up, the prices climb, and the whole thing starts to feel like more work than rest.

Club Wyndham skips that part. Pick a destination (Orlando, Myrtle Beach, a beach escape, and more) and get four days and three nights of resort-style accommodations starting at $199, often with a Getaway Extra credit toward your stay.

Spacious rooms, real booking support, and a genuine network of destinations, so the planning feels light and the trip finally feels earned.

👉 Browse the getaways.

Upcoming Events

• Thurs 7/2 @ 8am PT: AI Workflow Implementation Sprint: Week 1 Live Session
• Wed 7/8 @ 9AM PT: Critical & Creative Thinking Workshop with NextArrow (SGS Only* | Join the waitlist)
• Fri 7/10 @ 7AM PT: AI Workflow Implementation Sprint: Week 2 Live Session

* Smart Girl Society is our private community for women who want deeper conversations, accountability, and tools that actually make life easier. Join the waitlist to get in the next round.

Louise is a 13 year old Chiweenie (chihuahua/ wiener dog mix). She may be getting up there in age, but isn’t slowing down one bit. She keeps up with her new 6 month old sister, and loves patrolling the backyard for anyone who dares walk near her yard. Lou has three teeth left (hence the silly tongue flop) but loves to snack on apples and gold fish crackers.

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