Drop Off, Round 2

I feel successful from Thursday - somewhat.  I felt surprisingly blah about it once I’d finished.  I thought I’d get this great rush of positive feelings, but they didn’t come.  The successfulness I thought I would feel was tempered with something; I’m not sure what.  I’m not sure if it’s the regular I’m-too-hard-on-myself-crap or if there’s something else to learn from the little bit of disappointment I feel even though I was successful.  I wonder if others who aren’t like me would react this way.  Maybe it just felt too easy (even though it wasn’t!) compared to how hard Tuesday was.  Because when I look at it objectively, I feel like I had a decently challenging route.  I think anything would look easy compared to how much I struggled on Tuesday.  Maybe after I see how everyone else does, I’ll have a standard to compare my performance to, and I won’t be quite so hard on myself.

I did notice, though, that I was very slow to trust that I had my orientation down.  I was fairly sure I knew where I was as early as Park and MLK.  Then, I got to College, and I was pretty confident of my location.  I just needed that extra bit of information to really sell myself on my orientation.  So, I probably didn’t have to walk to Jefferson, but I would have felt pretty reckless crossing MLK at College.  I think on any other day, I probably would have taken the risk, but after Tuesday, I was a little gun-shy about getting off my line of direction.  I think the best feeling, though, was when I just KNEW I was oriented.  There was a real sense of relief and competency in that moment.

I did notice, though that it’s so much easier to walk confidently and take chances when everything seems to be right and go according to plan.  Everything fit into the schema I was developing, and that felt nice.

I do wonder how my drop off would have worked if I’d turned left and walked back toward Tennessee.  It seemed intuitive, though, to move in the direction the car was facing.  Because, if I’d found Call and MLK and needed to keep walking to the next intersection, I would have been totally thrown at Tennessee.  Because MLK was so unusually busy, I first thought it might be College or Call, so add that with Tennessee, and I might have had my mental map set at Macomb.  I’m glad that didn’t happen…

Oh, and I didn’t even use the sun at all until after I was sure of my location.  It helped, not perseverating on determining the location of the sun because the sun is still pretty high at 2:30.  When I did use it, it was just a confirmation of what I’d determined by listening and moving. 

Oh, and Mickey didn’t spoil it for me by mentioning the cemetery.  When he said it, I already had a fair idea that I was in the neighborhood, though I didn’t know if we were next to it or a block away.  Even then, the clue didn’t tell me which side of it I was on.  I could very easily have been on Call near Bronough or Macomb at Park with the mention of a cemetery.  So, the “clue” really wasn’t that helpful.  No worries.

I’m excited to see Amber go on Tuesday, and I’m still planning for Lauren.  I want to be sure she’s successful, so I’m really thinking hard about how to make that happen.