I have decided that this will be a series. They will be freeform so you won't see it broken up into the typical paragraphs and such but I will break it up to make it easier to read. No judgment please on the structure.
I have these random thoughts and ramblings that play out in my head, often similar to a story but not quite. I guess it's more like something that pops into my head and then a whole thought process, usually quite long, spawns from it. These usually take place while I'm stuck in traffic, thus the title since it actually has to do with traffic.
I was leaving my boyfriend's house a few months ago and was shocked by the amount of traffic on the highway at 6:15 am. Surely all of these people aren't headed into the office so early? But why are they out so early then? Are they all leaving that early to get a jump on the traffic?
I know that I have found myself leaving a few minutes earlier to get to work on time. So if more and more people are leaving earlier and earlier, are they really getting a jump on the traffic at all? Or are they just creating traffic at an earlier time? Do they start work that early or are they just hanging out at the coffee shop next door to the office and glad that they weren't stuck in traffic? If they are hanging out at the coffee shop, this means they are spending money that they normally wouldn't be had they not gotten there so early which definitely adds up.
Maybe they decide to go ahead and get started on all of their work for the day since they're at the office early anyway. So they start work 30 minutes earlier than they are required to be there. The boss starts to notice that they're there early on a consistent basis. He/ She starts giving them work that needs to be completed earlier in the day since they're there at that time already. So then the work piles up and they begin to feel that it's necessary to be there earlier just to get it all done or they begin to either work through lunch or eat at their desk instead of taking a real break. The boss is now taking notice that the employee is willing to work through lunch and begins to take advantage of that as well.
That employee still has to be there until the end of the work day though. It doesn't matter that they came in 30 minutes early and worked through lunch; they're scheduled to get off at 5 PM so they must stay. It's not the boss' fault that the employee chooses to be there early and work through lunch, right? The compensation for that employee isn't going up either because they make a salary, not an hourly wage. The employee ends up staying late one day to get everything done.
They notice that the traffic is much better if they leave 30 minutes later. Now they begin to leave later to miss the afternoon traffic, rationalizing it in their mind that they're basically getting home at the same time due to the decrease in traffic. In reality, they're home 15 minutes later than they used to be and while that doesn't seem like much, it means that the kids are getting picked up that much later or someone else has to get them because that extra 15 minutes means the daycare is closing. Dinner is now being pushed out a little later because everything is just running a little more behind than it was a few months ago. Since dinner is now being pushed back, it means everything is a little more hectic and there's a little less time to just chill and relax.
There's homework that has to be done, baths need to be taken, teeth brushed and maybe we start skipping the bedtime stories because now there just isn't time because that extra 15 minutes is gone. The kiddos looked forward to those few minutes of story time with their parents and now they are told it isn't going to happen and they should just go to sleep. Maybe little Johnny cries because he hasn't had a bedtime story all week and then mom gets mad because he's crying but then later feels guilty for missing story time and then being mad at her child. Mom also misses those few precious moments with her babies and begins to get depressed because she feels like everything has just gotten so out of hand and she has no idea how to get back to the way it was before.
Fast forward a few months with things continuing this way and now mom's depression starts to affect her marriage. Hubby is getting more and more upset that his once-vibrant wife cannot seem to get out of this rut. When he's at his wit's end because they haven't had sex in over a month, he finally decides to talk to her. She takes it personally and they fight. They try a couple of sessions of couple's therapy but this still doesn't do much. She starts seeing her own therapist and is now on 2 different medications which cause her to gain weight and now she feels even worse than she did before. Hubby starts having an affair. Wifey finds out, as they always do, and now the marriage is coming to an end because she just can't deal with the betrayal. The kids lose their comfortable family unit and everyone is suffering, and for what? This whole cycle began because of the need to miss out on the ever-growing traffic problem.
I know this may seem far-fetched to those reading this but in reality, it's not. We wonder how we get into some of the situations that we find ourselves in and it can be really hard to pinpoint how everything fell apart. One would never go back and say, "Gee, I think my marriage fell apart because I was trying to do everything I could to avoid so much traffic." Maybe we all need to just take a deep breath and figure out how to better cope with these stressors we find ourselves in because of modern society and its pressures.
Food for thought...
Peace, Love, and Light
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