[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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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?
no subject
Date: 2004-10-13 08:33 pm (UTC)