the worst of two lights

Despite my neighborhood being safe and quiet, I've felt reluctant to walk much at night. I had a vague idea this was related to a paucity of streetlights. On paying attention tonight, I think it's more: there is a paucity of streetlights, _and_ an abundance of house lights: spillover from living rooms, porch lights (so many, it's like people all have them on as a public service), even leftover Christmas lights.

The net result is enough light to ruin my night vision, but not distributed evenly enough to reliably illuminate the sidewalk. My eyes get blasted by light from the side but my feet have to go through pools of shadow. And between tree roots and topography, the surface is hardly level.

There's one block segment that has an abundance of streetlights, and while it's rather garish, I was able to stride along it with confidence.

I suspect that if a block had scarce streetlights and _only_ that, then my eyes could adapt enough to navigate confidently through that. But I'll probably never get to find out.