On discovering my neighborhood

 I discovered this evening, after staying in this apartment for three or is it four years oh god life has gone for far too long here, that my street, the literal street that connects by 10m from the avenue our house is at, is quite long. And by 'quite long' I mean, long enough to have a very interesting and long walk. By which I mean, one end of it goes to one river, and the other to the other river in the area, and you can spend a solid hour-and-half going from one end of the street to another.

It may not sound like much, but the implication is pretty amazing. When I went out on a walk this evening I took a circuitous path, figured the return way would be just as confusing and full of turns and twists. It was not to be so. Looked up the directions back, and Google said, go one street over, and walk on it for an hour until your reach home. Done! So simple.

It's great because now I wont have to worry about directions or being lost, anything like that. I just decide which river I want to reach, keep walking and get to it. No other thoughts necessary. Which saves my mental energy for things like walking meditation -- it's a thing, a mindfulness practice I'm trying to improve in -- podcasts, talking to people, all the things I want to do with two, three hours of my life. Multi-tasking baby, talking to people as I do healthy exercise.

Speaking of my walks, I've finally come to accept the fact that my walks aren't making me any healthier, they're just for their mental and creative well-being. You need to be breathing pretty seriously, your heart needs to be thumpthumppumping hard for your body to feel the good effects of a workout and my walks...they haven't been slow strolls exactly but they haven't been intense powerwalks that I was taking last month either. The scenery has gotten more interesting, the walks longer, but the intensity has gone down. Why make it difficult and be sweaty when I can just soak in the scenery, haha.

On the topic of walking, the weather's gotten real bad, it's been raining nonstop for two days it's not going to be different for the rest of the week. It's vrrry cold outside, the wetness is a bummer. That is probably going to put extra mental blockage for me to go on walks, but they've been so enjoyable until now. When the time change happens, oh dear gods it's only four days of enjoyable evening hours left things could get even trickier...Walking in the dark...isn't as fun, but the people are fine, the streets are safe, I don't have any valuables any criminals would be interested in, so I'm not overly concerned. The cold though, leaving the comfort of our warm comfy apartment into the howling chilling winds of Boston is going to be an adventure. I like adventures. They build character.

So I wanted to use this opportunity, the time, the circumstances to explore my neighborhood and the cities around me, and that's been going quite well. I remember street names now, the general lay of the land, and how the major arteries connect to each other. Finally figured out where Inman square is, and how it fits in the geography of the region, so overwhelmingly proud of that. It was getting embarrassing, not knowing the place with nicer bars and pubs around. It doesn't matter the bars and pubs, for multiple reasons at this point, but still. Something I can talk to about with people after I leave the area. Which I'm planning to do soon.