Wasted Time on the Road

It's 6:30am raining hard and I'm on the highway. I'm going away from the city. Traffic was steady the entire fifty something miles I had to drive to get to work. But the traffic going in the other direction you're glad you weren't in there: Long trail of cars barely moving at all heading towards the D.C. area. Some probably woke up at 4:30am just barely arrive to work on time. 

I've think about this all the time. Every single person in the cars on the clogged highway. I'm always curious what kind of jobs and what kind of lives they live that makes them ok with being stuck in traffic like that.

Some get paid hourly struggling to pay their monthly bills and basic needs.

Some are paid a crazy monthly salary and don't have to worry about anything as long as they wear a suit to work and stay obedient until retirement.

But the common thing between them is the wasted hours on the road. Every day is maybe 3-4 hours wasted away just by driving to and from work.

It feels like that is the accepted norm to keep your job and get paid to live.

Let's do some very simple math right here.

Average three hours driving on the road Monday through Friday.

3 x 5 = 15 

Think about how much that time is and how much better it could be used than to do things that you really are ambitious about.

I'd rather do things that I'm genuinely interested in doing and than make a living in an office and spending a big slice of my life driving stuck in traffic. There's so much more potential to do more than just being stuck between traffic lights. Most people just accept that that's the cost to pay to get themselves to work. I think there are other alternatives but we're not thinking outside the box enough cause we're thinking so narrowly. 

I don't know if I should have any say in this. Writing this is more of a shout into the dark empty void. I'm not a success, this isn't advice cause I also haven't made it yet.  I'm still trapped in the 9-to-5 grind. But writing this is the start of that new life. Like a chick using its beak to peck its way out of its egg. These blog posts are my first little pecks out of the egg.