Adjusting to Big City Life

I’ve lived in the greater DC metro area for 3+ months now and I’m still try­ing to adjust to liv­ing in a big city.

Life in a big city is pret­ty much polar oppo­site of where I’ve lived pre­vi­ous­ly. The excep­tion is, of course, Min­neapo­lis. I did live in Min­neapo­lis prop­er, but I was­n’t work­ing a job out­side the house so my expe­ri­ence is still dif­fer­ent. Liv­ing in Min­neapo­lis did pre­pare me nice­ly for DC, though. Name­ly in the dif­fer­ences in park­ing and high­er prices for things.

Differing Consumption Habits

I’m used to shop­ping being An Expe­di­tion, not an every­day casu­al thing. Where I grew up, shop­ping was some­thing that had to be planned out. The near­est gro­cery store was 15 min­utes away by car, so we usu­al­ly only went once a week and stocked up. The near­est gro­cery store to me now is a lit­tle over a mile away by bike. It’s small­er, with less selec­tion, but who real­ly needs 45 types of cere­al to choose from? I’m also get­ting used to casu­al­ly swing­ing by the shop to pick up a few things. I’ve start­ed car­ry­ing reusable bags on me in case I need more fruit and veg­gies or some ingre­di­ent for dinner.

I also don’t have room for a lot of stuff in bulk, so my room­mate and I have to be care­ful with what we buy at Cost­co. Nobody wants 16 rolls of paper tow­els casu­al­ly hang­ing out in their liv­ing room! Not that we have that prob­lem, yet.

Ease of Access

My par­ents’ house in the Mid­west has a walk score of 3. There is one small strip mall next to the neigh­bor­hood with a small restau­rant, a gas sta­tion and a Dol­lar Gen­er­al in it. Across the high­way from that is anoth­er small piz­za place. To get there, you basi­cal­ly have to take your own life into your hands cross­ing that road. It would be incred­i­bly dan­ger­ous to have a few drinks there and then try to get home.

Peo­ple sim­ply aren’t used to pedes­tri­ans in the area and don’t watch for them. The infra­struc­ture for walk­ing or bik­ing is also sore­ly lack­ing. No bike lanes and few sidewalks.

Here in DC, the oppo­site is true. Dri­vers have to yield to pedes­tri­ans in inter­sec­tions with no lights or face a fine. There are cross­walks and side­walks every­where! Bike lanes are abun­dant and most dri­vers respect the space. (I have fun exam­ples of a few peo­ple who do NOT respect cyclists’ rights to be on the roads!)

Things are easy to get to. I live near sev­er­al gro­cery stores, tons of restau­rants and shops to get what­ev­er item I may need. It’s incred­i­ble to me I don’t have to dri­ve 20 min­utes just to get to the near­est Tar­get or Wal­mart. Just walk for a few min­utes and pop into the near­est CVS! Easy peasy.

With the increase in walk­ing and bik­ing options, there’s less use for a car while liv­ing in the city. I’ve only used my car a hand­ful of times since I moved to DC. 4 times in 7 weeks is not a lot. I’m strong­ly con­sid­er­ing get­ting rid of it as the insur­ance and fees to park on the street don’t seem worth it. I’ll prob­a­bly have a post on that com­ing soon as I weigh the pros and cons of hav­ing a car in DC proper.

The Pollution

There is a lot more noise and light pol­lu­tion in the city than I’m used to. The street­lights are VERY orange and light up both the city and my bed­room. (See the pic­ture below for the lights I’m talk­ing about.) I’m used to pitch black, dead qui­et bed­rooms so this has been a bit of an adjust­ment for me. We live off a pret­ty major street, so ambu­lances and fire trucks scream by at pret­ty much all hours. Nor­mal­ly I don’t mind it, but it can be annoy­ing late at night, when I’m try­ing to record a pod­cast episode, or try­ing to have a casu­al con­ver­sa­tion with my room­mate in the liv­ing room.

I could also write about oth­er forms of pol­lu­tion like car exhaust, but hon­est­ly it’s not that big of a deal. I haven’t noticed it being a prob­lem in my day to day life. The only time I notice it is when I’m bik­ing on a bridge across the Potomac and have a lot of traf­fic next to me. Oth­er than that, the tree canopy and abun­dant gar­dens every­where seem to soak up the bad air. I love being able to take a stroll around the neigh­bor­hood and check out the pret­ty flow­ers around me!

The only down­side to this is aller­gies. I’ve nev­er had a prob­lem with aller­gies before I moved to DC but they hit me like a freight train. Thank­ful­ly my room­mate intro­duced me to the won­der­ful world of Cost­co brand aller­gy med­i­cine! No more itchy, watery eyes, puffy face, run­ny nose and sneez­ing for me! I also found a ven­dor at the mar­ket who sold me some local hon­ey. I’m hop­ing that helps and even­tu­al­ly helps wean me off the medicine.

Busy busy busy!

You might have noticed I haven’t writ­ten much late­ly. Liv­ing in a big city means there are lots of things to do basi­cal­ly all the time! I spend more of my time actu­al­ly going out and doing things, which does­n’t leave much time for me to write about the things I am doing. I had the same prob­lem jour­nal­ing in high school. It’s easy to write about your life when you don’t have much going on! There are always peo­ple com­ing into town to vis­it, fun things to do in the area and of course, the biggest time sink of all, work. I don’t mind going to work, but I am casu­al­ly look­ing for a new job in the area as I don’t think this job is the right fit for me long term. Inter­view­ing for new jobs also takes time!

I do have a lot of things to write about that I need to get out before I for­get. I attend­ed the Play­ing with FIRE doc­u­men­tary pre­mière in Long­mont Col­orado, I’ve start­ed bik­ing to work fair­ly reg­u­lar­ly, and I had an ini­tial con­sul­ta­tion with a per­son­al styl­ist that is mak­ing me recon­sid­er basi­cal­ly every­thing about my life.