My best sleep comes when I'm camping though. This is definitely not a comfortable or familiar environment, but I still sleep very well and feel refreshed in the morning.
That being said, I usually sleep terribly in friends' houses or AirBnBs.
Exercise. When camping, I'm typically much more active during the day than my usual routine. This is especially true if I'm on a hiking trip, walking several miles each day. But even if we've setup a stationary camp, all of the little activities add up to a lot of movement.
Lack of distractions/schedule. When camping, I typically just go to bed when I get tired, which is usually soon after it gets dark, and I wake up naturally, not to an alarm clock, typically with the sun.
Cool, dark, and quiet. It's usually cool at night, very dark, and relatively quiet. That contributes to great sleep regardless of the environment.
I've also had some of my worst sleep when camping. A couple of times when it was way, way colder than expected. It's hard to sleep when you're shivering. But mostly the problem is when it's too hot. I sleep terribly when it's warm, and I think that's true for many people.
I also think it matters whether you're camping solo or in a group. When you're with a group, I think you instinctively feel safer, but I've had some bad nights camping solo. One night especially sticks out in my mind. I'd seen a black bear and a cub earlier in the day, across a stream. They were a safe distance away and probably didn't care about me at all. But all night, whenever I heard a noise, I'd spring up and question for the thousandth time if I hung my food far enough away. It's amazing how large and menacing an opossum or deer can sound walking through the underbrush. But the next night when I met up with my companions, I had the best sleep ever. :)
I do tend to get nervous of nature at night when I'm camping, but love my experiences during the day.
So yeah I completely understand what you mean :)
For me, there's also the fact that you are one unit out of very many within the hotel. Even if someone is going to be bold enough to break into a hotel room in the more "public environment", the odds are fairly low you'd be the victim from a pool of hundreds of rooms. Your stay is also brief, so you don't have a routine schedule a would-be criminal has time to study. Plus there's typically not going to be much worth stealing out of a hotel room anyway (wide screen TV, computers, etc).
I've always felt fairly safe in large apartment/condo buildings. I've never lived on the ground floor, so it feels like the odds of someone entering the building (or climbing the outside), coming to my floor, and choosing my specific unit to break into are quite low. You're very unlikely to be targeted by outside strangers; and there is a much smaller pool of people who live in the building capable of targeting you.
Three years ago I moved into an apartment with a street-level door. Basically a neighbourhood of townhouse-like buildings. It's been almost two years since I was burglarized while at work. I still don't sleep well anymore, with the ever-present feeling of dread that a nighttime home invasion is coming any day now. I can't leave the apartment for longer than 30 minutes at a time without expecting to come home to another completed burglary. I can't afford to move yet, but I can't wait for the day I go back to doubling my current rent to live in a higher class, 100+ dwelling building.
I will probably never buy a house. As I get older and save for a down payment, I'm sure it will be for a condo. I don't care for condo associations with their politics and fees, and the fact you only own or semi-own a section of an entire building. But I would never feel safe in a house where I have only a single door sitting between myself and my things, and an entire city full of parasitic people.
This thread has been really illuminating for me. I didn't realize so many people were so afraid of "criminals" that they can't even get good sleep.
It could be a neighbour you've said hello to dozens of times, watching from their window. It could be a stranger who finds it worthwhile to sit in their car watching your home. You'll never know.
Either way, they've invested time in observing you, and have specifically chosen you as their target. Yes, it makes you "targeted". When you come home to your back door broken open, and find $5000 worth of shit missing, and every drawer in your home opened and sifted through? When you can't possibly even know exactly what's missing. A month after the incident, you're still finding new things that were taken from you.
It's not just about the stolen property. It's your entire personal space ripped apart. It's a form of psychological rape. Hope you get to experience that some day.
Wow.
I can understand why you might feel emotional about a robbery. I imagine it's very invasive.
Given that, I cannot imagine why you would wish it on someone else.
My point was that it's an irrational fear: you're likely not going to get robbed and it's not worth spending a bunch of time worry about it.
You realize I posted as someone who has been through that? "Likely not going to get robbed" doesn't apply, as it's already happened. And if it happens to have been one of my neighbours who committed the crime? Great, next time they see a large box delivered to my place, they know I'm ripe for another round.
I don't really want to compare being burglarized to sexual rape, as obviously the latter is much more damaging. But would you even dare telling a woman that was raped once that she's being irrational because she's terrified every time a man walks 5 steps behind her on the street?
Do I really want you to have to experience it? No. That was a reactionary remark for making light of a victim's mental state.
Yes. It is irrational, because the likelihood of rape from a random stranger is actually extremely low.
I'm not disputing the pain of your experience. It likely was very traumatic.
However, just because something was very painful doesn't mean it's rational to live your life in fear of it happening (when its probability is low). I likewise recognize that being the victim of a terrorist attack is traumatic, but it would still be irrational to avoid planes for that reason.
This is when averaged across the entire population. A 14 year old girl walking through a "bad neighbourhood" alone at night doesn't necessary carry the same risk of rape that a 6-foot tall, bulky body builder does.
I have not either, but every single person I know who's had their home invaded is a fair bit more nervous about that sort of thing than people who haven't.
A coworker of mine had his apartment burglarized by someone who got to the roof of his building and squeezed in through the tiny bathroom window of his top floor apartment approx 8 months ago. I don't think he's gotten over it yet.
My parents are the same way, they grew up in the city, and between them have 3 different stories of being burgled, and even when they moved to a very quiet, extremely low crime (as in basically zero, aside from DUIs and the occasional marijuana arrest) rural neighborhood, still lock their doors at night.
It's much easier to case a location that is directly accessible from the street. And easier to break into a door or window for that location, rather than entering a building and then breaking down a door in a hallway with frequent foot traffic.
When you go from sharing a bed or dwelling to having a whole distinct hotel room to yourself, it can be very mentally relaxing, in my experience. (At least in short intervals; obviously I prefer having someone there with me long term. Although some couples sleep in separate rooms and report very good results!) Interesting phenomenon for sure.
Maybe more oxygen rich environment?
Evolution? Genuine question.