Growing up in a tiny New Hampshire village meant being far from everything. My town had a general store with milk and chips, a post office, and a small library offshoot. If you wanted anything else you had to drive into the next town over for it.

There were really only two roads to get into town. By the end of high school I could drive them with my eyes closed. I effectively did some mornings given my typically teenage malaise before noon. Even now I could probably recite every dip and turn.

Living in a city hasn’t really changed that though. I would typically use the same one or two streets to get to work every morning or to walk to the bars or to go for a run. Even though I had more choices, I still made the same decisions. There was a brief trial and error period initially, but once I figured out the most optimal paths I stuck to them.

This seems unavoidable to a certain degree. I am abolutely a creature of habit, and these automatic reactions help avoid decision fatigue. And most days I truly do want the quickest route between points A and B.

Because I’ve been travelling so much I haven’t formed any of these habits recently. Not having fallbacks is absolutely exhausting at times. But I can also pretend to be exploring with every street corner I pass. This feeling isn’t sustainable long term, but in the short term it feels very valuable. Like I’m reopening some cobwebbed pathways in my brain and remembering how they work.