The Joy of Navigating by Foot

Some streams of consciousness to tide you over til next week

Jan 15, 2026

(being weekly post 2 of 52 in the year 2026)

Once again, today I found myself at a cafe, staring at my drafted post about Methodable and feeling that it’s not ready to publish. Of course, I still had to publish something today - that’s the commitment. So I started thinking of other options. None of them were looking great and I kept chugging ahead with the draft, but I was not feeling optimistic.

The cafe closed at 8pm. I left, not quite knowing where my car was. I had parked far away. I wasn’t sure whether to go left or right. As I started walking, I took out my phone to call a friend. That call lasted about one minute before my phone died.

Before my phone died I had checked Google maps, to no avail. And after my phone died, I felt the impulse to check my phone again, and again, in case I might screw my eyes up at that small map and figure out some new fact about the world. But each time, I remembered that my phone was dead, and some part of my brain loosened its grip. Eventually I stopped checking.

There was a moment where I stopped walking, and just thought, “okay, I’m here.” I’m here on this street. I know where the cafe is - not on my phone, but in space. it’s over there. I’m here and the cafe’s over there and the car is in some 5-block radius from the cafe, and I’m walking the edge of that radius. And I don’t know how long it will take to find the car.

And, strange to say, it was a good feeling. I suddenly had a task that required my faculties of sight, of walking, of navigation. There was nothing to do but glide through the streets of Seattle, searching for that car and refining my strategy. How pleasant.

One time I was at some kind of event, and some kind of person asked me some kind of question. Clearly I don’t remember many details of that story, but I do remember that I said to a large room of people, “I like running fast down hills with uneven terrain.” The presenter said, “Really? I also like running on rocks! So does this guy over here.”

Okay, I remember now, it was a “Tools for thought” event, and the presenter was doing a live demo of a super-connecting tool for networking people together with similar interests. So he put me down in his database as “(Daniel Sosebee) -> (likes) -> (running on rocks)”, and lo and behold, up popped a visual representation of the connection between me and my newly discovered soulmates.

I was shocked, but should I have been? Maybe this is a more common interest than you’d expect. Maybe it’s innately joyful.

I like running fast on uneven terrain because it requires my full attention. One time I was on road trip in Wyoming, and I pulled off to summit a random mountain I’d found on AllTrails. And I got to the top after traversing a long and exposed ridge, only for the weather to get stormy. The irony is, unlike this evening, my phone had battery and I had cell service up there, so I could google what posture to use during a lightning storm. Well, in the end I decided to make a run for it, but the ridge I took was much too long, and so I booked it straight down the mountain.

I feel guilty describing how much fun it was. Besides the danger of lightning, I could have slipped and seriously injured myself. But in that moment everything coalesced into a single, perfect challenge. My entire experience was just this tunnel of present. Each iota of brain power or body power at my disposal was immediately and continuously dispatched towards the singular goal of getting myself down the mountain, safely, as quickly as possible.

I liked it so much I made a drawing about it:

Well, that drawing isn’t quite realistic - I was wearing shoes at the time. But it gets the feeling across. And in fact, this drawing holds special significance for me, since I drew it at the height of my illness with mono. The drawing was an escape. I wished to draw the kind of exhilarating experience I was so removed from in my weakness.

Today I still struggle with aftereffects of that illness. I’ve lamented recently that I don’t have enough “flow” in my life. I take it easy in order to not overexert myself, but that just gives me more time to spin my mental wheels. Less fun than “going for it.”

But this blog is a good thing, because tonight it is compelling me to “go for it.” Because after I found my car, I drove home straightaway and opened up my computer, and tried again to complete the Methodable draft, and when I failed I had to adapt - I couldn’t give up.

And I started thinking of other things I might write. I started a piece called “Good Sleep is Really Important,” but I didn’t have much to add other than what the title already said. And then I started writing this one.

And now it’s 11:22pm, 38 minutes of Wednesday left, and I see that tunnel of time ahead of me. Another perfect task. 38 minutes to get down the mountain before the lightning strikes.