Hi Carmella! I was a newsletter recipient of yours pre-Substack so I'm glad I found you here!
Directions/navigating is near and dear to my heart. I had a horrible sense of direction until my mid-20s when I moved to the Bay Area and started driving there with paper maps and no GPS (I was driving my now-husband's van from the 70s that didn't even have a rear view mirror!). Then I moved to Austin, TX and was car free for the first year I lived there - so I relied on buses, Car2Go (I didn't have a smartphone and they used to have cards that would unlock the cars!), and the occasional taxi. It taught me how to navigate like a total boss! I ended up with a car and a smartphone for a few years (for work as dog walker) and the designation as the Human GPS in my friend group. I just knew how to get places and how things were laid out and frequently just wrote directions down for myself. It's made me a pretty bad backseat driver at times, so I do have to work on that. Now I'm navigating a new and old place :(my home state of Maryland) and it's wild what I can and cannot remember. My sweet husband takes the same route to work every single day and gets lost easily - Google Maps is also his guidepost. I kind of like the thrill of no navigation? I love that my car has built-in GPS and will often turn it on just to see how far away I am from somewhere that I want to go. I went back to a flip phone in 2016 and the last time I was truly lost I was trying to follow the saved directions on my tablet and that was a mess. Next time I'll just write them down. Or print them out! My parents (that I live with) have a printer and I am loving printing things!
Hey Grace, thanks so much for sharing about your experience on here! I feel you about the thrill of no navigation, although it can be stress-inducing when you have to be places by a certain time. I live in North Carolina now and the roads are super windy (compared to Miami's grid), they change names all the time, and I'm often driving in rural areas, which can be confusing! But I am totally with you about the printer love -- I turn to my printer so much more these days without a smartphone, like printing out tickets to a show or boarding passes.
Love this, Carmella, thanks for sharing! Before I had a smartphone, I had a flip phone, and I got lost SO OFTEN. I remember biking around Boston with completely no idea of where I was, finding the subway tracks, and following them back towards downtown to get my bearings. So the GPS in the phone has been amazing for me, but I also get that it's a huge amount of distraction while driving. Glad you have found a way to drive more safely and comfortably!
yeah, getting lost can be annoying! i also had a flip phone until 2017 and had to print out directions before leaving the house. but also, the city where i live is fairly straightforward (getting around boston is so confusing!) and so i really feel like i should have this city figured out by now!!
Hi Carmella! I was a newsletter recipient of yours pre-Substack so I'm glad I found you here!
Directions/navigating is near and dear to my heart. I had a horrible sense of direction until my mid-20s when I moved to the Bay Area and started driving there with paper maps and no GPS (I was driving my now-husband's van from the 70s that didn't even have a rear view mirror!). Then I moved to Austin, TX and was car free for the first year I lived there - so I relied on buses, Car2Go (I didn't have a smartphone and they used to have cards that would unlock the cars!), and the occasional taxi. It taught me how to navigate like a total boss! I ended up with a car and a smartphone for a few years (for work as dog walker) and the designation as the Human GPS in my friend group. I just knew how to get places and how things were laid out and frequently just wrote directions down for myself. It's made me a pretty bad backseat driver at times, so I do have to work on that. Now I'm navigating a new and old place :(my home state of Maryland) and it's wild what I can and cannot remember. My sweet husband takes the same route to work every single day and gets lost easily - Google Maps is also his guidepost. I kind of like the thrill of no navigation? I love that my car has built-in GPS and will often turn it on just to see how far away I am from somewhere that I want to go. I went back to a flip phone in 2016 and the last time I was truly lost I was trying to follow the saved directions on my tablet and that was a mess. Next time I'll just write them down. Or print them out! My parents (that I live with) have a printer and I am loving printing things!
Obviously, I can go on about this a lot, lol.
Hey Grace, thanks so much for sharing about your experience on here! I feel you about the thrill of no navigation, although it can be stress-inducing when you have to be places by a certain time. I live in North Carolina now and the roads are super windy (compared to Miami's grid), they change names all the time, and I'm often driving in rural areas, which can be confusing! But I am totally with you about the printer love -- I turn to my printer so much more these days without a smartphone, like printing out tickets to a show or boarding passes.
Take care!
Love this, Carmella, thanks for sharing! Before I had a smartphone, I had a flip phone, and I got lost SO OFTEN. I remember biking around Boston with completely no idea of where I was, finding the subway tracks, and following them back towards downtown to get my bearings. So the GPS in the phone has been amazing for me, but I also get that it's a huge amount of distraction while driving. Glad you have found a way to drive more safely and comfortably!
yeah, getting lost can be annoying! i also had a flip phone until 2017 and had to print out directions before leaving the house. but also, the city where i live is fairly straightforward (getting around boston is so confusing!) and so i really feel like i should have this city figured out by now!!