To simply glide through the city, out onto the car park that is Kings Way a.m. and even, to wait patiently behind all the lovely parents dropping their lovely offspring at school. Resisting the urge to brazenly dodge beamers, mercs and Toorak tractors who'd half pulled off the road, and wait for them farewell their wonder-children.
No snarling, swearing, head shaking, angry gear changes followed by angry turbo acceleration, no scanning traffic furiously for the shorterst lane, or the aforementioned gratuitous head-flick sweep of my blind spot.
How do you think I went?
Well, lets just say, at the completion of that fun little game, it was
Traffic - 1, Me - zip.
As a road veteran of ten years, who has been in five car accidents (directly causing three), with duct tape holding up the front of her car and a meagre three demerit points to last until 2011 - the challenge was doomed from the start. But it did lead me to question, why am I such a bad driver?
Is it just inattention? My predilection to pay more notice to the radio and singing in full voice than to road rules? A tendency to apply make up, send texts and drink from my thermo-mug while driving?
Whilst these habits are certainly detrimental to my driving, and on occasion other road users, they are ultimately symptoms and not the root of the problem.
Which I have identified as: I am always in a hurry.
Always. Every bloody day. Perpetually rushing, almost late or already late, keeping someone waiting, about to miss a yoga class or desperately trying to get my foot in the door before the shop, chemist, post office or medibank outlet closes.
So I say this earnestly, to other drivers who have displayed similar irritation at my onroad behaviour as I do to other got-my-licence-from-a-weeties-box types: I am sorry and I share your frustration. I am frustrated too!
And after venting this concern with several friends recently, I discoverd that they are equally troubled. What is wrong with me/us/society today that we have become a nation of perpetually late, over-committed frustrated people??
Another victim of this crisis is the personal relationship. Take this tongue-in-cheek email survey I received yesterday, in which the lead question was:
When listening to someone tell a story, are you more often than not just waiting for them to finish so that you can tell your own story, which is not only better but also more directly involves you?
Well, yeah. Totally! Aren't we all guilty of that some, if not most, of the time? Looking at it in the harshness of print didn't exactly make me feel proud though. But again, I don't think it's mere selfishness or a fondness for my own voice (contrary to popular belief). This habit is borne from needing people to hurry the hell up, so we can move on to our next conversation, phone call, meeting, coffee, dinner, gym class, bikini wax and so on.
The older we get, it seems the busier we become. The first quarter hour of any scheduled catch up is genearlly spent doing the 'gosh aren't we busy', 'can't believe it's been so long' dance with whoever is lucky enough to have secured your time. The implication of this is not that we don't value these occasions, only that it's hard to maintain a meaningful connection when you're always looking at your watch.
Working in the busy world of major events for the past six years has not helped my propensity to rush. One particular legacy of this is my phone manner at work - which can be abrupt. And in an office where some people have spent the better part of their lives drinking from the same coffee mug, it doesn't go down so well. I was somewhat perturbed recently (and I use the term 'somewhat' lightly, as I only felt brief, token remorse for causing a colleague this level of undue anguish), to find out someone had put me on their self-proclaimed, and evidently quite public 'Shit List'. Apparently said person was quite miffed at the way I quickly ended phone conversations by saying thanks and promptly hanging up.
Well my goodness, it appears I failed to read the Telephone Code of Conduct in full! On which page of the HR manual was that? Oh, there it is.... 'Management recommends that all all employees shoot the breeze with their colleagues for a period of no less than five minutes, before terminating any phone call'. It was right next to the sections on 'Why it is wrong to use someone else's mug' and 'How stealing someone else's stapler and white-outing your name on it doesn't make it yours'.
I digress. But that 'Shit List' thing really pissed me off! So much so, that I'm now cultivating my own list entitled 'The Lame, Boring and Irrelevant People List'. And three guesses who is on top.
My point - finally - is that life is busy, busy, busy. But at what point are we simply rushing from one thing to another, breaking road rules and not actually having meaningful relationships?
Anyhow, you can all ponder this... but I have to run. I have to meet a friend for coffee, go to yoga, pick up my dry-cleaning and solve world poverty before lunch.
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