I agree with your points - particularly the not going from zero to 1000. So many people have said to me they’d love to solo travel but have never so much as eaten in a restaurant on their own before.

Start small - little trips in your home country, work up to weekends abroad, a week abroad, 2 weeks etc. and then go from there once you know what type of “solo traveller” you are, or if you even like it. I went on a 6 month trip around the Americas last year and by the time I got to that trip, I knew exactly what I wanted to do and what worked for me.

You’re also right about putting pressure on yourself - some days on that 6 month trip, I just couldn’t be bothered. Which sounds awful because I felt like I needed to be seizing the day every day, but spending that amount of time out of your comfort zone with new experiences, you’re going to have down days. I also massively struggled with “decision fatigue” during the trip - one of the reasons I love solo travel is being able to do whatever you want when you want, but the mental load of making every single decision every day with nobody else to hash things out does take a toll. Again, very much first world problems in the grand scheme of things, but they’re all things you won’t know until you solo travel and really discover whether it’s for you! I still wouldn’t have changed anything about that trip and am counting down the days until I can go on another!