[cities & me]
Oct. 6th, 2004 05:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wispfoxSo, I'm attempting to explain why cities scare me as much as they do (and they do! Boston used to scare me. Now, I just mostly avoid driving in it and I'm fine), and thought it needed a wider audience than in the comment I made.
A major portion of my fear of cities is that they are so overwhelming that I cannot process well enough to figure out how to get where I want to go - no matter _how_ simple the instructions are. Combine with this my complete lack of direction sense, and the fact that I need at least 3 times navigating something, within a fairly small amount of time, before I have any hope of being able to repeat it again myself (detailed written instructions help), and I've got a pretty major handicap in larger cities. Smaller ones simply have fewer options, so are less overwhelming.
I can - now - generally manage to figure out unfamiliar public transportation, with a _lot_ of advance research, to the point where I know exactly where I need to go and all the steps to get there, before I have to do it. I cannot navigate things on the fly unless I'm already familiar enough with most of the necessary steps, or I have insanely detailed instructions. Public transportation (with the notable exception of busses in a city, which tend to have far more available options) tends to have a fairly limited selection of where it goes, and a fair number of the online sites for these places will tell you how to get from point A to point B. This makes it _much_ more managable for me than driving (or walking!) in a strange city.
I know that I'm bad at this kind of thing, which means that trying to do it _scares_ me. I'm more willing now to _try_, at least, but it's still terrifying. And I think that the amount of time that I spend in Greater Boston is _why_ I'm more willing to try. I've gotten used to it, once, with lots of help.
I doubt I'll ever _like_ a large city, but I can get better at navigating with sufficient help, time, and patience.
[edit: I have found, living near Boston, that I like being _near_ cities, because they give me lots of things I can do, at the same time as having a reasonable distance to and amount of natural settings. I did _not_ enjoy growing up in a place with nothing interesting (to me) to do...]
A major portion of my fear of cities is that they are so overwhelming that I cannot process well enough to figure out how to get where I want to go - no matter _how_ simple the instructions are. Combine with this my complete lack of direction sense, and the fact that I need at least 3 times navigating something, within a fairly small amount of time, before I have any hope of being able to repeat it again myself (detailed written instructions help), and I've got a pretty major handicap in larger cities. Smaller ones simply have fewer options, so are less overwhelming.
I can - now - generally manage to figure out unfamiliar public transportation, with a _lot_ of advance research, to the point where I know exactly where I need to go and all the steps to get there, before I have to do it. I cannot navigate things on the fly unless I'm already familiar enough with most of the necessary steps, or I have insanely detailed instructions. Public transportation (with the notable exception of busses in a city, which tend to have far more available options) tends to have a fairly limited selection of where it goes, and a fair number of the online sites for these places will tell you how to get from point A to point B. This makes it _much_ more managable for me than driving (or walking!) in a strange city.
I know that I'm bad at this kind of thing, which means that trying to do it _scares_ me. I'm more willing now to _try_, at least, but it's still terrifying. And I think that the amount of time that I spend in Greater Boston is _why_ I'm more willing to try. I've gotten used to it, once, with lots of help.
I doubt I'll ever _like_ a large city, but I can get better at navigating with sufficient help, time, and patience.
[edit: I have found, living near Boston, that I like being _near_ cities, because they give me lots of things I can do, at the same time as having a reasonable distance to and amount of natural settings. I did _not_ enjoy growing up in a place with nothing interesting (to me) to do...]
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Whoa..
Date: 2004-10-07 03:38 pm (UTC)I grew up in Crystal Springs, MS. When we moved there I was 3. There was one red light in the town. Literally, people would give directions according to that one red light. There was one big church in town, the mayor walked his dog around and mowed his own lawn, there were 6 cops. The high school I graduated from in the next town over (because we lived in the country and had moved to a place right over the county line), a public highschool mind you, had 57 graduating seniors.
Big cities are scary!!!!
I've been commuting this week by subway (and twice by commuter rail/subway combos) and I'm so proud of myself for managing to not get on the wrong train yet!
As my mom said "You're like a real, big city commuter now, like in the movies!"
no subject
Date: 2004-10-07 03:58 pm (UTC)I actually didn't grow up in _that_ small a town (as compared to your example, at least), but I got lost so often and easily than I pretty much didn't go anywhere by myself while there. This makes it difficult to get used to navigating. I refused to learn to drive until I was 21 because it _terrified_ me, but it has improved my independance and my ability to navigate (not to an amazing extent, but at least now I _can_ do so without immense ammounts of terror).
Yes. Big cities are scary.
Commuter rail is more annoying to get on the wrong train. I have not yet, but the fact that it runs _so_ much less often makes such a bigger problem. I also tend to avoid commuter rail, since I have a car, and it takes a _lot_ longer, and tends to not run when I would want to use it.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-08 03:31 am (UTC)You? Never! *snerk*
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Date: 2004-10-11 11:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-13 06:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-13 08:31 pm (UTC)You find the _strangest_ things, you know that?
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Date: 2004-10-13 08:33 pm (UTC)