I'm very gifted at multitasking - exemplified by hitting 'Publish' IN ADDITION to all the tasks I was already doing! I therefore achieved MORE than the tasks already on my plate.
That, Terry, makes me BEYOND 'good at multitasking', thank you very much.
Hilarious. I shouldn't laugh, because I'm the person who, in the street, has to orient himself such that the street atlas and he are exactly aligned with the street, so I can work out which way to go. In my perfect world, the roads would have numbers and letters painted on them, and page numbers, so we could turn to the right pager on the A-Z straight away. But a couple of things puzzle me:
1. Was that car the correct scale? Because if it was, it took up half the boat and should have been easy to find.
2. Given that your location relative to the car hadn't changed, how could the direction the boat was facing make a difference? Or did you think that the car had stayed in the same absolute location while the boat was turning?
Thanks, Terry! To be honest I think my ideal scenario for navigation is to simply teleport to where I need to go. Need to wait for the tech to catch up.
1. No. I take your point though. Next time I take a ferry anywhere, I'll make sure I'm in a SMALL boat with a BIG car. You might well have just found the answer to my problem.
2. Erm, don't know and don't know. Really. My brain can't do these things. That's the thing!
LOL! I'm still working on the 'hardly effort' part - I try soooooo hard to know where I am in the world (I mean, literally!!) - and I hope I'll make progress one of these days!!! 🤣
I'm on the Isle of Wight right now thanks to you! Wanting to comment there that I lived on Seaview In Laguna Beach for three years, never knowing that the name came from the island. The closest I ever got, was Brighton when I was 16 years old, so many years ago. I will be reading more of you!
I was on a People-To-People-Student-Ambassador on tour. I got to stay with three separate families during the trip. The first family was in Brighton... a little boy and a little girl with their lovely parents. Then in Skagen and Vienna also. My Seaview place didn't have a view of the ocean except for a gallon or two from the deck in the back, high up and at least a mile from the actual water. I was glad I'd found that place and enjoyed it then. Traveling wasn't so easy at 16. Eight hours on a bus, train, or plane is hard at any age. I do like being an armchair traveler. Within a few clicks of the remote, I can be anywhere I want to be in this world. Other people are happy to show a video and give descriptions of life there at that moment in time.
I felt lost at sea with you. Great post on a Friday and it made me laugh. (not at you but with you!) I'm glad you got back to the van so easily! Thank you Rebecca. Enjoy your weekend. :)
Thanks, Julie - it's great to have your company out there on the waves! Enjoy your weekend too - I loved our writing session earlier! Looking forward to next week's, too. 😊
LOL - thanks, Claire! This wasn't something I was going to write about because I never did quite find the answer - still, it was fun! And I got so carried away with it that I even published the post a day too soon - THAT'S how lost I'd got.....
Hehe 🙃 I think no one really knows what day it is yet post Christmas haze so you’re fine! I was glad to have it to read! Some days are quieter on here I think?
Jan 6, 2023·edited Jan 6, 2023Liked by Rebecca Holden
Great read thanks. But I don't envy you. I was looking into this recently as my when out and about my Wife also struggles with knowing where the car is or which way to go.
I wonder if you have DTD (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-77759-8) Your sense of direction comes from your other senses working together (Proprioception). There are also some cells in the hippocampus called “place cells” that help us identify our place in an environment.
It might be that super-navigators might have a biological advantage but thanks to neuroplasticity, if you stop using satnav and practice being aware of your surroundings you can improve your sense of direction. Good luck! (oh and thanks for the mention! :-)
Thanks so much for this really helpful info! I heard of DTD around this time last year on a radio programme - it stopped me in my tracks, because the person talking sounded exactly like me! I wonder if that's my issue? Anyway, after I'd heard the programme was when I started to acknowledge and admit - both to myself and to others - that I have a problem finding my way around - and shortly after that I started to explore (LOL!) my past experiences of getting lost and writing about some of them here.
I'm really pleased that my habit of getting lost is now out in the open, and that I and those around me recognise that I'm not up to scratch in that department. It's actually a relief!
I'm having particular trouble at the moment with one of my local walking routes - it's my favourite, not very long, and one I'm very familiar with - but because it looks very different after some tree felling work, plus all of the fallen leaves making tracks and paths less easy to see, I am getting lost pretty much every single time. It's absolutely ridiculous! I also really struggle if I walk a known route in the 'wrong' direction, despite making a habit of looking behind me frequently whenever I'm out walking in an effort to learn the route both ways.
I haven't gone too far down the science rabbit hole with it all (yet), although I did do a series of baffling online tests last autumn - the exact ones named in Figure 2 in your link - where my performance freaked me out so much that I had to go for a long walk to clear my head. I don't need to tell you what happened....
Re the mention: you're very welcome! I loved those posts, and I'm envious of your Brompton! My husband and I hired bikes on the island pre-pandemic - his was electric, mine was leg-powered. He amused himself no end by breezing past me at the rate of knots up one of the steepest hills in Shanklin - WHISTLING! You can go off some people.
Thank you for the link you posted - I'm going to explore it in more depth over the weekend. Very much appreciated!
I was wondering why this post came on a Friday. Too much stuff to do! You're forgiven. But don't let it happen again. 🤣
I didn't think you could get lost on a ship but I guess I was mistaken. It did seem confusing. I think I might have to read it a second time. Glad you finally figured it out.
This was a great read! Thanks for making me laugh Rebecca! I too get confused why sometimes we spin and others don’t, and my other half tries to explain it to me, sometimes when we are doing the exact opposite of what he is explaining. And we do this every couple of months! Thanks for explaining it. We are the people whose car alarm always goes off, so it is easy to find our car 🤦♀️. Looking forward to reading the other links, and thanks again for mentioning mine. Maybe we’ll have to meet up near your place or mine for a walk or cycle once the weather is a bit less soggy! Cheers for the weekend!
Sabrina, you and Terry have given me all manner of ideas for how to find our van next time! I'll put a note on the dashboard to remind me to not disable the alarm!
We come to the island for work several times a year - Jim has a client over there - and I'd absolutely love to meet up next time the trip isn't quite so brief! And I'm hoping (fingers crossed) to walk the coastal path sometime...
It’s still early here, which makes it really hard to not laugh out loud at this 😂 Loved the pictures that illustrate and punctuate your story, too: well done, Jim!
And I’m reading it on Saturday morning, by coincidence, which has me less disoriented! 😄
LOL, thanks so much, Bryn! We had such fun with the shoot! I have to admit that those fingers grasping the air were very much an authentic representation of how baffled I was by my reconstruction - the camera never lies!
Then, in the end, your sense of direction was vindicated?! Sea travel is such an arcane science, I still have no idea how any of it works. I love your experimental models, and I'm glad you were able to get to the bottom of this mystery!
I am not without sympathy, Rebecca, but I have to say this just cracked me up. How you drive yourself crazy! I especially loved Jim's photos of you with the little boat and tiny car. Priceless. So many insights here as to what makes up Rebecca Holden. One of your best so far, girl! My mom traveled with me to Europe four times. She was always so relaxed because she NEVER had to worry about where we were and what we were doing or if we had enough currency. She let me worry about all that and she just held on to my coat tail. My suggestion for you? Hang on to Jim and just cool out. Let him manage the travel logistics. After all, you manage that grocery list! Ha ha ha
LOL Sharron - I'm so glad I made you laugh - I've achieved my aim! I find my orientation issues pretty funny myself!!! Yay to hanging onto Jim's coat tails - in fact that's exactly what I do in a crowd. Thankfully he's very tuned in to having to keep an eye on where I am if we're out together - I'm easily distracted , and he knows that if I lose sight of him during one of my attention diversions I'd be completely stuffed.....
Thinking about it, I have no idea why I so enjoy solo hiking, rather than in the company of others. I could save myself a whole load of stress, couldn't I?!!!
Thanks so much for your lovely comment - it's really made me smile. :D
Oh I do adore the Solent. And indeed, the Isle of Wight. And how utterly discombobulating for you to have been all this while aboard the wrong boat. (Is it a boat, or a ship? Isn't that one of those things nautical types get their lanyards in a loop about?)
I think the only solution can be to call 'avast behind' and plant your pirate flag at the end you first thought of, go and sit in the crumbs for a bit, and then run out on deck and surprise the little blighter and see which way it's flying?
Thanks for this, Jackie! 'Lanyards in a loop' - LOL!
I deliberated long and hard over which word to use, and ended up with a mixture - I was going through cycles of ferry/boat/ship/vessel - and due to my editing having been cut short thanks to my wrong-button-pressing the inconsistencies are noticeable!!!
I'm DEFINITELY going to adopt the tactic you've described in your second paragraph. EPIC! 🏴☠️
A little late here, sorry, but great post. Sometimes, we're our own worst enemy. All it takes is one little thing and we can throw ourselves for a loop :)
Glad you finally figured it out, but don't feel alone having trouble on boats. I hate them (as well as planes) and don't do well at all.
Hope you had a great holiday and keep your head up! :)
Thanks so much, Mark! Re the figuring out thing - I'm not sure I ever did! I wish I'd been able to work it out better that I had - even now I can't work out if/when/why/how many times that boat/ship/ferry turned around...! 🤣
Well, that'll teach me to do too many things at once! Welcome to my Saturday morning post... on Friday afternoon! 🤣
I had to check the calendar!
🤣 I don't know whether to be annoyed or amused at not doing it properly! Going with the latter for now....
I thought women were supposed to be good at multitasking
I'm very gifted at multitasking - exemplified by hitting 'Publish' IN ADDITION to all the tasks I was already doing! I therefore achieved MORE than the tasks already on my plate.
That, Terry, makes me BEYOND 'good at multitasking', thank you very much.
#cheeky
Blimey. Keep yer wig on! I stand correct! Chortle! I meant "corrected"
Hilarious. I shouldn't laugh, because I'm the person who, in the street, has to orient himself such that the street atlas and he are exactly aligned with the street, so I can work out which way to go. In my perfect world, the roads would have numbers and letters painted on them, and page numbers, so we could turn to the right pager on the A-Z straight away. But a couple of things puzzle me:
1. Was that car the correct scale? Because if it was, it took up half the boat and should have been easy to find.
2. Given that your location relative to the car hadn't changed, how could the direction the boat was facing make a difference? Or did you think that the car had stayed in the same absolute location while the boat was turning?
🤣
Thanks, Terry! To be honest I think my ideal scenario for navigation is to simply teleport to where I need to go. Need to wait for the tech to catch up.
1. No. I take your point though. Next time I take a ferry anywhere, I'll make sure I'm in a SMALL boat with a BIG car. You might well have just found the answer to my problem.
2. Erm, don't know and don't know. Really. My brain can't do these things. That's the thing!
🤣
Exactly. I know what my brain is good at and challenged by and hardly effort at the stuff I don't enjoy and can't fathom. Enjoy the humor, though!
LOL! I'm still working on the 'hardly effort' part - I try soooooo hard to know where I am in the world (I mean, literally!!) - and I hope I'll make progress one of these days!!! 🤣
I'm on the Isle of Wight right now thanks to you! Wanting to comment there that I lived on Seaview In Laguna Beach for three years, never knowing that the name came from the island. The closest I ever got, was Brighton when I was 16 years old, so many years ago. I will be reading more of you!
How lovely, Lisa! I think Seaview is such a lovely name for a place where you can see the see from pretty much everywhere! 🤣
I'm pretty near to Brighton, although I don't go there very often - bit too busy for me, I have to say!
I was on a People-To-People-Student-Ambassador on tour. I got to stay with three separate families during the trip. The first family was in Brighton... a little boy and a little girl with their lovely parents. Then in Skagen and Vienna also. My Seaview place didn't have a view of the ocean except for a gallon or two from the deck in the back, high up and at least a mile from the actual water. I was glad I'd found that place and enjoyed it then. Traveling wasn't so easy at 16. Eight hours on a bus, train, or plane is hard at any age. I do like being an armchair traveler. Within a few clicks of the remote, I can be anywhere I want to be in this world. Other people are happy to show a video and give descriptions of life there at that moment in time.
I felt lost at sea with you. Great post on a Friday and it made me laugh. (not at you but with you!) I'm glad you got back to the van so easily! Thank you Rebecca. Enjoy your weekend. :)
Thanks, Julie - it's great to have your company out there on the waves! Enjoy your weekend too - I loved our writing session earlier! Looking forward to next week's, too. 😊
YAY! :) It's great to hear the writing sessions are helpful for you. It was nice to have some new faces too. I look forward to seeing you next Friday.
Great post Rebecca and one I could/ should read twice but knowing I’ll also never work it out 😆 🛥✨🙃
LOL - thanks, Claire! This wasn't something I was going to write about because I never did quite find the answer - still, it was fun! And I got so carried away with it that I even published the post a day too soon - THAT'S how lost I'd got.....
Hehe 🙃 I think no one really knows what day it is yet post Christmas haze so you’re fine! I was glad to have it to read! Some days are quieter on here I think?
Great read thanks. But I don't envy you. I was looking into this recently as my when out and about my Wife also struggles with knowing where the car is or which way to go.
I wonder if you have DTD (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-77759-8) Your sense of direction comes from your other senses working together (Proprioception). There are also some cells in the hippocampus called “place cells” that help us identify our place in an environment.
It might be that super-navigators might have a biological advantage but thanks to neuroplasticity, if you stop using satnav and practice being aware of your surroundings you can improve your sense of direction. Good luck! (oh and thanks for the mention! :-)
Thanks so much for this really helpful info! I heard of DTD around this time last year on a radio programme - it stopped me in my tracks, because the person talking sounded exactly like me! I wonder if that's my issue? Anyway, after I'd heard the programme was when I started to acknowledge and admit - both to myself and to others - that I have a problem finding my way around - and shortly after that I started to explore (LOL!) my past experiences of getting lost and writing about some of them here.
I'm really pleased that my habit of getting lost is now out in the open, and that I and those around me recognise that I'm not up to scratch in that department. It's actually a relief!
I'm having particular trouble at the moment with one of my local walking routes - it's my favourite, not very long, and one I'm very familiar with - but because it looks very different after some tree felling work, plus all of the fallen leaves making tracks and paths less easy to see, I am getting lost pretty much every single time. It's absolutely ridiculous! I also really struggle if I walk a known route in the 'wrong' direction, despite making a habit of looking behind me frequently whenever I'm out walking in an effort to learn the route both ways.
I haven't gone too far down the science rabbit hole with it all (yet), although I did do a series of baffling online tests last autumn - the exact ones named in Figure 2 in your link - where my performance freaked me out so much that I had to go for a long walk to clear my head. I don't need to tell you what happened....
Re the mention: you're very welcome! I loved those posts, and I'm envious of your Brompton! My husband and I hired bikes on the island pre-pandemic - his was electric, mine was leg-powered. He amused himself no end by breezing past me at the rate of knots up one of the steepest hills in Shanklin - WHISTLING! You can go off some people.
Thank you for the link you posted - I'm going to explore it in more depth over the weekend. Very much appreciated!
You and Terry are both making me laugh today! Go guys!
Thanks, Mary! LOL! 🤣
I was wondering why this post came on a Friday. Too much stuff to do! You're forgiven. But don't let it happen again. 🤣
I didn't think you could get lost on a ship but I guess I was mistaken. It did seem confusing. I think I might have to read it a second time. Glad you finally figured it out.
LOL, thanks, Matt! In fact I'm not sure I ever did figure it out! I need to pay decent attention the next time I get on that boat....!
This was a great read! Thanks for making me laugh Rebecca! I too get confused why sometimes we spin and others don’t, and my other half tries to explain it to me, sometimes when we are doing the exact opposite of what he is explaining. And we do this every couple of months! Thanks for explaining it. We are the people whose car alarm always goes off, so it is easy to find our car 🤦♀️. Looking forward to reading the other links, and thanks again for mentioning mine. Maybe we’ll have to meet up near your place or mine for a walk or cycle once the weather is a bit less soggy! Cheers for the weekend!
Sabrina, you and Terry have given me all manner of ideas for how to find our van next time! I'll put a note on the dashboard to remind me to not disable the alarm!
We come to the island for work several times a year - Jim has a client over there - and I'd absolutely love to meet up next time the trip isn't quite so brief! And I'm hoping (fingers crossed) to walk the coastal path sometime...
It’s still early here, which makes it really hard to not laugh out loud at this 😂 Loved the pictures that illustrate and punctuate your story, too: well done, Jim!
And I’m reading it on Saturday morning, by coincidence, which has me less disoriented! 😄
LOL, thanks so much, Bryn! We had such fun with the shoot! I have to admit that those fingers grasping the air were very much an authentic representation of how baffled I was by my reconstruction - the camera never lies!
Then, in the end, your sense of direction was vindicated?! Sea travel is such an arcane science, I still have no idea how any of it works. I love your experimental models, and I'm glad you were able to get to the bottom of this mystery!
Thanks, Jacquie, that makes me feel a lot better! Although.... I'm not sure I ever did quite get to the bottom of it all....! 🤣
I am not without sympathy, Rebecca, but I have to say this just cracked me up. How you drive yourself crazy! I especially loved Jim's photos of you with the little boat and tiny car. Priceless. So many insights here as to what makes up Rebecca Holden. One of your best so far, girl! My mom traveled with me to Europe four times. She was always so relaxed because she NEVER had to worry about where we were and what we were doing or if we had enough currency. She let me worry about all that and she just held on to my coat tail. My suggestion for you? Hang on to Jim and just cool out. Let him manage the travel logistics. After all, you manage that grocery list! Ha ha ha
LOL Sharron - I'm so glad I made you laugh - I've achieved my aim! I find my orientation issues pretty funny myself!!! Yay to hanging onto Jim's coat tails - in fact that's exactly what I do in a crowd. Thankfully he's very tuned in to having to keep an eye on where I am if we're out together - I'm easily distracted , and he knows that if I lose sight of him during one of my attention diversions I'd be completely stuffed.....
Thinking about it, I have no idea why I so enjoy solo hiking, rather than in the company of others. I could save myself a whole load of stress, couldn't I?!!!
Thanks so much for your lovely comment - it's really made me smile. :D
Oh I do adore the Solent. And indeed, the Isle of Wight. And how utterly discombobulating for you to have been all this while aboard the wrong boat. (Is it a boat, or a ship? Isn't that one of those things nautical types get their lanyards in a loop about?)
I think the only solution can be to call 'avast behind' and plant your pirate flag at the end you first thought of, go and sit in the crumbs for a bit, and then run out on deck and surprise the little blighter and see which way it's flying?
That will show them. x
Thanks for this, Jackie! 'Lanyards in a loop' - LOL!
I deliberated long and hard over which word to use, and ended up with a mixture - I was going through cycles of ferry/boat/ship/vessel - and due to my editing having been cut short thanks to my wrong-button-pressing the inconsistencies are noticeable!!!
I'm DEFINITELY going to adopt the tactic you've described in your second paragraph. EPIC! 🏴☠️
A little late here, sorry, but great post. Sometimes, we're our own worst enemy. All it takes is one little thing and we can throw ourselves for a loop :)
Glad you finally figured it out, but don't feel alone having trouble on boats. I hate them (as well as planes) and don't do well at all.
Hope you had a great holiday and keep your head up! :)
Thanks so much, Mark! Re the figuring out thing - I'm not sure I ever did! I wish I'd been able to work it out better that I had - even now I can't work out if/when/why/how many times that boat/ship/ferry turned around...! 🤣