Cruising Along

A funny thing happened this week: My drives home from work were relatively stress-free, the areas that usually stack up considerably lighter.

And, lighter traffic means a lighter Annmarie.

Like laundry, traffic is on my top ten list of annoyances. My family tells me I'm an aggressive driver. Perhaps. I prefer to think of it as defensive driving. The problem is, I do become a tad too defensive and get myself all riled up, every misstep by another driver giving me an excuse to rant.

But, this week was different. I found myself just cruising along, and other than the orange jeep that almost ran me off I75 yesterday, I didn't have moments I feared for my life. I sat in the middle lane for the most part, not worried about the people doing 100 zooming by me or the others puttering along at 55 I was passing. I let a couple of cars in when they were in the merge lane. What's the difference, I thought, if I am the 3rd or 5th car in line? I did draw the line, however, at letting the ginormous trucks or the RV's hauling cars in. I still felt the need to  be able to accelerate and enter the interstate at more than 20 mph. Remember, I'm a work in progress and have my limits.

I need this shift as other stresses and deadlines are mounting. My stress will never fully go away--I have to admit I actually thrive on low levels of it--but I am learning to recognize when  too many stressors stack up. More importantly, I am learning to let some of the less important ones go. I've challenged myself to make my drives to and from work my decompression time--listening to music on new stations I find, catching up with a friend or my daughter, or just using the time to reflect and think about solutions. It's way better than plotting the death of the Mercedes who just cut me off because they couldn't manage to get in the right lane in a timely manner.

I'm thinking if I can overcome my borderline road rage, I can learn to cruise through other issues.

I'll keep you posted.




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