(organized by when we met)

I joined couchsurfing.com in late 2016 as an opportunity to take portraits of non-professional models. My friend Kate suggested the idea. She knew that I hosted professional models (that is, I let them stay in my apartment for free, whether we were working together or not) and that I was interested in taking portraits of non-professionals. 

Shooting was optional and I promised to only publish pictures after the sitter has seen them and explicitly agreed. I stated in my profile that I only wanted female guests. To be honest, I expected that people would consider this creepy and stay away, which, to be honest, as an introvert, seemed like the optimal outcome.

I got my first request a few days after I set up my account. From a guy. He had seen that I preferred women, but figured he would try anyway. I discovered that this is the case for a lot of men! I thought, “Perhaps this male tendency to ignore preferences was one of the reasons I prefer women…” Although to be fair, I have enough experience now to understand ignoring preferences is not necessarily a gender thing.

Some of the people I hosted did not want to take pictures, which was fine with me.

Some did want pictures but we didn’t have time, which was a shame.

I’m not hosting any longer. It became a bit overwhelming. By the end of 2017, I had hosted about 30 times. I had a hard time saying no to requests to stay, despite saying no about 90% of the time.

An unexpected benefit from the experience was getting better at saying no.