Stephen Mouzon over at The Original Green recommends doing a map that shows the Web of Daily Life. I did mine in Google Maps, unfortunately, and after reading the Terms of Service there, I come to the conclusion that I can’t post my screen captures as they constitute derivative works. I find myself wondering how Stephen created his.
The resulting webs, though, are quite instructive. After six months in my new apartment, I’ve gone from living a relatively eremetic life at a boarding school with one (sometimes two) twenty-minute errand trips a week to the grocery store and the pharmacy and so on, to a much more peripatetic lifestyle, where I’m walking to restaurants (when I can afford to eat out), to the pharmacy (when my health is suffering, which is rarely now), to get my morning coffee, to meet friends for a trivia night (when I can afford to do so, alas), and to at least some of my grocery shopping. I make one trip a week to get my other groceries and to drop off or pick up dry cleaning. The vast majority of my life is now structured around my feet — with the exception of my 9-mile round-trip commute to work.
This is also excepting the reality that my girlfriend lives two hours away, and I go to see her quite regularly.
All in all, I’m enjoying this new life. I wish I knew more people in town and had a wider circle of friends, but that’s building slowly, and I’m sure it will grow the more time I spend living here. Someone even invited me to run for the Planning & Zoning board here in town the other day, which would be interesting…
Sounds great, Andrew! Every move towards greater walkability is a good thing, IMO. As for my images, I did a screen shot from Google Earth, took it into PhotoShop, and did the rest there. It didn’t occur to me to check the Google Earth Terms of Service, since I’ve seen so many people using their images with no rebuff from Google. Maybe I’m wrong on that… if Google has an issue with that, I’ll let you know.