Subconscious
Today, I left the work site for my hotel room (it's right next door). I didn't think about which door I would use to enter the hotel or which route I would use to get to my room. I didn't even think of which room number I was in or which floor I needed to get to in order to find it. I just walked there - by the best route and throught the best door - without thinking of it in the slightest. I didn't even really look at the number on my door as I inserted the key card and opened it. I've been staying in the same room for a week and in the same hotel off and on for several weeks.
About half way to my room, I noticed that I wasn't thinking about it and it seemed a bit odd. Maybe it was just the effects of the fumes from the chemicals I was using just a few minutes earlier. But this transistion from conscious to subconcsious became very apparent to me. I'm not sure when it happened, but it definitely has happened. I can navigate the hotel as naturally as if it were my own home. I don't have to think of where I'm going or how to get there. Perhaps the desire to be somewhere isn't even fully concsious, but I just get up and let my feet carry me wherever I need to go without thinking about it.
This hotel is a maze. I got lost a few times the first few days that I was here. It's quite poorly designed. There are two direct routes to the lobby from my room - I'm not sure which is shorter, they're probably about the same distance - but both have the appearance of going absolutely nowhere. The halls take seemingly random turns, you go down full and partial flights of stairs. It's a maze. I've had to direct people to various destinations a couple of times because the layout is just confusing and people usually only stay a day or two. There are a few signs on the walls showing which way to go - but they are poorly arranged and not easy to follow.
To get to the pool area from the lobby, you gotta go past the restaurant, into the bar, take a right turn in the bar, head out of the bar, take a sharp left into a short side hall that appears to go nowhere (the sign indicating where the pool is appears to direct you past this hall), take another immediate left to find a door that indicates that it will take you to the pool - this door opens into a stair well that appears to exist for maintenance personnel, but it does in fact lead down to the pool area - after descending the stairs, you find another door that looks vary janitorial in purpose, but opens into the pool area by what appears to be a maintenance entrance. There is a main entrance into the pool - but it comes in from another area of the hotel. You could get to the main pool entrance from the lobby - you'd still have to go through the bar, but you'd have to go a lot further around the pool, down an elevator, etc.
What seems odd to me is that you have to go through the bar to get to the pool. People with kids would understandably want to go to the pool, but they might not want to take their kids through the bar - which is a designated smoking area and everything that you would associate with a bar.
About half way to my room, I noticed that I wasn't thinking about it and it seemed a bit odd. Maybe it was just the effects of the fumes from the chemicals I was using just a few minutes earlier. But this transistion from conscious to subconcsious became very apparent to me. I'm not sure when it happened, but it definitely has happened. I can navigate the hotel as naturally as if it were my own home. I don't have to think of where I'm going or how to get there. Perhaps the desire to be somewhere isn't even fully concsious, but I just get up and let my feet carry me wherever I need to go without thinking about it.
This hotel is a maze. I got lost a few times the first few days that I was here. It's quite poorly designed. There are two direct routes to the lobby from my room - I'm not sure which is shorter, they're probably about the same distance - but both have the appearance of going absolutely nowhere. The halls take seemingly random turns, you go down full and partial flights of stairs. It's a maze. I've had to direct people to various destinations a couple of times because the layout is just confusing and people usually only stay a day or two. There are a few signs on the walls showing which way to go - but they are poorly arranged and not easy to follow.
To get to the pool area from the lobby, you gotta go past the restaurant, into the bar, take a right turn in the bar, head out of the bar, take a sharp left into a short side hall that appears to go nowhere (the sign indicating where the pool is appears to direct you past this hall), take another immediate left to find a door that indicates that it will take you to the pool - this door opens into a stair well that appears to exist for maintenance personnel, but it does in fact lead down to the pool area - after descending the stairs, you find another door that looks vary janitorial in purpose, but opens into the pool area by what appears to be a maintenance entrance. There is a main entrance into the pool - but it comes in from another area of the hotel. You could get to the main pool entrance from the lobby - you'd still have to go through the bar, but you'd have to go a lot further around the pool, down an elevator, etc.
What seems odd to me is that you have to go through the bar to get to the pool. People with kids would understandably want to go to the pool, but they might not want to take their kids through the bar - which is a designated smoking area and everything that you would associate with a bar.
posted by phil at 2:35 PM
7 Comments:
Ah, the subconscious. He is a strange manner of being. I say "he" because sometimes it seems that "he" isn't part of "me," but is, instead, a separate entity entirely.
I think that subconscious navigating is something that develops similarly to the way you develop motor control--that is, you just do it, you don't really thing about it--but it's likely in a different region of the brain. After something becomes familiar enough, your conscious mind doesn't need to be bothered by how to do it, so it is free to think about other things--work, lunch, what's for dinner, bills, balances, or anything else that you might "have on your mind."
Oh, I meant to add that when you want to get off the couch and make some Kraft® Macaroni and Cheese, you don't have to think about which limbs to move, muscle fibers to contract, or nerves to respond--you only have to think, "I want to get up and make some pasta." Similarly, I think that when you are navigating subconsciously you just think, "I want to be over there."
Another funny thing is that supposedly sleep deprivation "harms route memory" (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4596318.stm), but it seems that when I am overly tired, I am more prone to subconscious navigation--like autopilot. However, I do notice that I have more difficulty thinking about how to get somewhere (even slightly) unfamiliar when I'm tired.
Yeah, I should have ended this post about half way through. It was supposed to be about the shift from concious to subconcious specifically of navigation while on foot. It wasn't supposed to be about how the hotel is a maze. But, this is craziness, so I decided that I was not going to censor or divert the flow of ideas from my brain.
I hope the maze-like hotel has the fire escapes clearly marked.
Fire escapes? They don't have any fire escapes.
I should have said, I hope they have the exits clearly marked. I was thinking about trying to find my way through confusing, unfamiliar hallways if there were a fire.
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