12mo ago

I am to celebrate new years eve alone. How can I celebrate solo?

For reasons I may not disclose freely on the internet. I am going to celebrate new years eve this year by myself. Does anyone know of ways to solitarily celebrate new years eve?

Note: Englisch is not my first language

Edit: Thank you all so much for the responses. I ended up making it a good movie night, and watched the count down on tv. Along with some retro video games, plus pizza. All things considered it was a night well spent!

91 comments

If you don't have a lot of money, you could try masturbating every hour until midnight. Conversely, if you do have a lot of money, you could also try doing that.
- If you have a lot of money you can also have someone do it for you. Treat yo self!
  
  That would not be celebrating new years alone, though.
- If you have money, you can set that challenge to Easy with some cocaine

Get yourself a good dinner takeaway, favourite drink, choose a movie you would like to watch, and end it with some retro video games of needed.
- Be warned, take out/ delivery on NYE usually takes 1-2 hours longer if you're in the city. Lots of cancellations too. It might ruin your evening.
  
  Excellent warning. Might want to order very early in the day and reheat if necessary, if it's good enough/worth it.
  Welp, too late now.
- Start with a 2013 video game and end with a 2014 video game after midnight.
- The game after everything is the way to go, also put some time into figuring out a good movie!
- Me: shitty fast food, cheapish beer, and watching the Star Wars 1978 holiday special.
  It’s all uphill from here.

- That's suicide by pickles
- Yes, this.

Drink heavily, masturbate furiously, and fall asleep in a puddle of your own shame by 9pm.
- 9PM? Common now, what's wrong with 9AM?
  
  If you start drinking early enough then you can take a nap and be ready for the evening drinking.
- My grandpa told me not to listen to a random idiot in the internet.
- This is what the Internet is for. Nice!

With star trek.
- Fun will now commence.

Plot the downfall of the bourgeoisie.
- THE RULING CLASS WILL TREMBLE BEFORE COMMUNIST REVOLUTION! 『 Bolshevik chorus swells 』 WE HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT OUR CHAINS!
- I like to pronounce that word “bourgeoisie” just to piss people off

It's traditional to play lots of video games. Trust me on this one.
- Two years ago, I played Terraria, last year was Valheim, and this year I'm still deciding. I might play Valheim again. I'm working on a base that is absolutely huge.
  What will you be playing?

What do you do any other night you're alone? Do that. NYE isn't special.

Eat a healthy homemade dinner, go to bed early, sleep well, and wake up the next day feeling great and ready to take on the new year.

Bottle of champaign and watch some fireworks
- Champagne?
  
  Don't mind if I do
  
  Fake hurting.
  
  Champayne

Christmas, New Year's Eve, birthdays; you name it buddy. I lie down and try to fall asleep by 7pm.

My alone NYE when the wife is working is typically a dinner of hors d'oeuvres type foods, made throughout the night. Cheese and crackers, some summer sausage if I have it, puff pastries with spinach or Buffalo chicken, pigs in a blanket, mozzarella sticks, maybe some samosas, even pizza rolls. For entertainment, a good video game or two and several of the NYE streams on YouTube to make fun of.
Looking forward to seeing how God awful the Planet Fitness show is this year! Dick Clark and Casey Kasem are both rolling in their graves tomorrow night for sure.

Has anyone said masterbate furiously?

LOTR marathon drinking game

Get hammered, play Baldur's Gate 3, pass out at 3am.

Spend it in quiet contemplation of the year behind and the one ahead if you want. Not every holiday needs to be a party.
- For 2023 I made a resolution, for the first time since the 90s. The resolution was to have $5000 in the bank.
  I pushed hard, got up to about $3500, then my housing situation changed and I had to pay higher rent. The savings rate become quite low assuming perfect discipline. I don’t have perfect discipline so my savings rate was just a couple hundred a month.
  After the moving expenses I’m back down then slowly up to about $2k in the bank.
  Overall, I failed to reach the $5k, but it did change my relationship with money in a major way. Until this year, until I decided to make savings my top priority, I was always living paycheck to paycheck. I’m 41. This has been my entire adult life: worrying about whether I’ll make the next round of bills. Often asking for extensions on my rent. Paying lots of late fees.
  This year is the first time I’ve lived with any kind of financial surplus. When my rent is due I don’t even check my balance I just pay it. All the other bills are on auto. It’s such an amazing feeling.
  So that was last year. This coming year my goal is to be present for people. I’ve lost too many friendships from neglect on my part. And Ive passed up too many opportunities to connect, because I wanted to maintain my freedom.
  My whole life Ive separated myself, doing everything I can to cut ties and maintain flexibility. My resolution this year is to stay present for the people in my life, to commit to and fulfill some social obligations. To stop worrying so much about how I feel and focus more on what I can do for people.
  
  Well said. Good luck with your resolution this year.

Whatever you want! When I have free time alone (a scarce commodity) I like to read, maybe have one drink, listen to music.
If it's not by choice and you don't want to be alone, go out and have coffee or a drink, watch people.
If you are trying to make it meaningful, do a ritual. Like write down what you want to get rid of, what doesn't serve you (anxiety, whatever troubles you) and burn it, let it go. A time that's unusual is a good time to make changes that you want, to interrupt habits.

I will be reading books, watch some netflix (Star Trek voyager and prodigy) then sleep.

This might not be the answer you're looking for but the way I see it, it's just another day, and we generally put far too much pressure on it and on ourselves on it, and that it's perfectly fine to not do anything special.
If for your own reasons you really do want to celebrate anyway, try and make/order your favourite meal, think of a good movie or two that always make you feel nice, and spend your evening enjoying those, but most importantly - don't feel down or bad for being alone, there's nothing wrong with that, and even if it feels like there is, this one night has very little significance in the grand scheme of things.

Dude, just get a bunch of weed and alcohol of your preference and just enjoy... I'd give my right leg if I could spend new year's eve alone... or any other eve for that matter.

Not sure what to recommend. Last year I spent it by listening to taxi drivers wishing happy new year to each other via their radios using SDR. But that was more like just 2 minutes as the new year came. Still, plenty of drunk phone calls around 1am.
Anyway, that's probably not much of a fun activity, and it's not likely you have SDR either.
Probably just watch some movies, order some better (in taste, not quality) food and enjoy those. Maybe go fire some quiet fireworks like fountains, if you fancy those. I say the "quiet" bit as a dog owner.

Do some random acts or act of kindness on that day or night in addition to the things that others said.

Watch your favorite movie or play your favorite game, especially one you haven't seen in a while

A few ideas come to mind
Video games
Scary movies
Exercise
Chores
Read a book
Other hobbies

If you have Animal Crossing New Horizons for the Switch, you can celebrate with your animal villagers

A few years ago, I spent New Year’s Eve flying solo. Passed the time with a mix of baking, movies, cooking dinner, a long walk, doodling, and a bunch of Sudoku games. The night was dry, so I stepped out close to midnight, had a sip of whisky under city lights to see the New Year in. Then I popped an edible and fucked off to bed with a Netflix Lullaby. Best of luck too you!
- You waited until midnight to start drinking and get high? I'd be lit the whole fucking time it's new years!
  
  Priorities. You want to be lit and forget the whole thing like a chump or do you want a sick story like the champ you replied to? Sounded like they had an awesome day and night and got a bunch of fun shit done.

Get some food and beverages you enjoy.
Take a bath and use a bath bomb. (It doesn't matter who you are, baths are awesome)
Drink bevvies in the tub. Bonus: walk around your place naked because it just feels good

What do you normally like to do when you have an evening alone?

I've spent holidays alone or travelling in the past. I also enjoy watching streamers on Twitch like Will Neff who do weekly movie nights, watches entertaining YouTube videos like Roll For Sandwich, and shows like Survivor on stream. His discord community hosts a variety of events when he's not streaming. At any given point you can usually catch his community members watching movies together in a voice call or just while chatting. My suggestion would be to find a streamer that you enjoy watching or a community that participates in events together on mediums like discord.
That or just get sucked into a really good show. Whatever works for you

Do whatever is your favourite hobby but crack a few beers if you drink (or whatever else alcoholic or non alcoholic drink you enjoy) while eating some of your favourite snacks and just have some good alone time!
Gaming, knitting, scale models, whatever floats your boat.

I've spend many holidays alone at this point. Even last Christmas.
For New Years I usually try to get to the city, and walk around for a couple of hours enjoying the chaos around. You might bump into some random people, which could lead to who knows what?
- Depending on how fast you’re going when you bump into random people, it could lead to nuclear fusion.

For reasons, I'm also. Having some fancy dinner and watching the fireworks. Already made friends with the table next to mine, an older fun couple visiting from Sweden.

Either A. Take the time to write down your experiences from the past year, hurdles you've encountered, what you've achieved, what you want to accomplish in the coming year, and what you need to do to get there. Really dive into it and try to set the tone for a good start to 2024.
Or B. Get really fucked up on your intoxicant of choice.

I fucking love celebrating that day alone. It never made any sense to me celebrating a calendar change and all the build up to nothing actually happening. The first year I spent it alone I had been the sober driver and took a friend home early and happened to still be on the old dirt road heading back to the party when midnight hit and it was so peaceful. So up until I had a family of my own I spent every new years alone on a hike or working on a project alone or with a close friend, woke up feeling better.

Did it more than once and it wasn't bad at all. Get some food you like, some nice movies/games, a stroll around the city to see people going crazy at midnight maybe, maybe a drink at the bar and then to sleep as soon as you're tired without having to stay awake to make other people happy.. I enjoyed it when it happened..

If you like videos games you could do that

Do you game on xbox by any chance? I’m spending this NYE alone because I’m generally a hermit/loser. So I’m probably gonna smoke weed like chimney and play battlefield 2042, must like I do most nights.
You could join in, if you’d like.
I’ve considered going out alone, trying to meet some people. But it’s just so sad.

I treat it like any other day and ignore all events focused on relationships, but I'm partially disabled and unable to do anything social. Just do whatever you find interesting in life and ignore the "celebration" the memory will fade into the background like all the other days and you won't have depressive repercussions due to self reflection.

Last year I started my adventure into homelab, Linux, open source and it led to other technical hobbies. Started by repurposing an old PC into a server.
This year I think I'm taking up music recording

There's usually a bunch of new years events like at a bar, concert venue, or restaurant you can go to and just hangout

I am taking the metro train to downtown with my bike. I will ride around a little, stay for the fireworks, and then take it back home. Easy enough. You are obviously going through something so don't make being alone on new years eve too significant. Stuff happens, and hopefully you come out of this stronger.