I don't understand your point. I never use a GPS to navigate, and I've gotten plenty lost. Six months ago, while aimlessly exploring westward on my motorcycle to get some air at the beginning of quarantine I went down a road I was familiar with a different segment of. I did not realize the road went through some strange twists (with no exit) where I got on it this time, and by the time I was able to get off of it, I was completely disoriented. My attempts to correct got me even more disoriented, to the point where I was relying on the sun so I would at least know the cardinal direction I was heading in. My original thinking that getting my bearings would be trivial caused me to make quick decisions that left me so confused that I couldn't even retrace my route back to the road that originally discombobulated me. I didn't want to ask for directions because I was afraid of the virus. I ended up pulling into a hardware store's parking lot, and calling my mother who lives in a different state asking her to google map the hardware store by name so she could point me back in the direction of the city where I live. I had managed to get over an hour away from my house, meaning that almost every decision I made was wrong.

I can't say it wasn't a nice ride, though. But my point is that people are not homing pigeons. I'm very good at navigating generally, but a couple of bad decisions can compound. That's how people get lost in the woods. If your commute is complicated, the way you actually end up memorizing it is by screwing it up a bunch of times.

For your original question, I guess it's a little bit hyperbolic to say that I can't find my way home. I like to think that my sense of direction is fine. It would be more accurate to say that I can't find my way to an unfamiliar place a second time, if I didn't manage my own navigation the first time.

Yeah, that I totally get. I just wasn't sure if you were being literal about the other part, which would seem really weird to me.