not being directionally-challenged

welcome to introspection ft. harsehaj! ⭐️ i’m harsehaj, an 18 y/o always up to something in social good x tech.

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btw, feel free to reply with topic ideas you want me to write about for future posts.

onto today’s topic: not being directionally-challenged 🛣️ 

a skill of mine that i take great pride in is not being directionally-challenged. i’m so good at navigation — i’m the type of person that looks at a map before going somewhere, and then just goes based off of memory. it’s pretty freeing.

i vividly remember the time my family and i went on a trip to whistler, and i put these skills to great use. we were all walking to the central shopping plaza to drop off my dad & sister so they could go ziplining, but my mom & i had to make our way back to our hotel by ourselves.

two problems:

1. my mom didn’t know that actual address of our place. 😭

2. my dad no longer had access to his phone because he was ziplining. so, my mom couldn’t text him and ask.

i ended up leading the two of us back home because i remembered the cartoon stickers on the electrical boxes along our way. i was so proud of myself when we swung open our door in record timing.

another more recent example was when i was alone in copenhagen with a dead phone last summer. the hotel staff told me i still had to wait 3 hours before i could check-in so i decided to go walk around copenhagen. 10 minutes later, i realized my phone only had 3% left. i quickly memorized the route to a nearby library so i could charge my phone there. i made my way to the books easily, but then realized european electrical outlets are not the same as canadian ones. i just stared at the circular socket dumbfounded, but how i got a working charger is another story of its own. i eventually made my way back to the hotel with a fully charged phone and in time for check-in. 😋 

even now after moving to the bay, i’ve picked up the public transportation and general geography super quick. i’m like a local if i do say so myself.

knowing how to navigate takes so much stress off of traveling, and that much more fun. it enables me to be comfortable to go out and explore, because i know how to find my way back without obsessing over my google maps coordinates. 🗺️ 

would you consider yourself directionally-challenged?

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