Driving Down the Road of Life

I learned to drive in New Hampshire. Since I learned to drive in ice coated parking lot, I became a master at driving in the snow and ice. Now at that time, New Hampshire had fewer than 1 million people in the entire state, so the roads were never really crowded. Today, however, I live in Los Angeles, where there are more cars on the road at 3 AM, just in LA, than there probably were in a day back in those days in the entire state of New Hampshire. During rush hour however, driving in LA becomes a matter of Patience rather than skill. Millions of cars, bumper to bumper, crawling to and from work. Even a New York cabbie would have trouble making time in that mass of varied drivers, though some try very hard.

Now embarrassed to say, but I'm a very aggressive driver. When I lived in Italy I fit right in, and the Italian drivers have been known to be quite crazy. I recall one day driving down the road at about 60 miles an hour, and I was passed by a driver who immediately then pulled into his driveway. I also recall a driver who was stopped at a red light behind the line of traffic, who drove up onto the sidewalk and passed all of the cars in order to run the red light. Now this is aggressive! I wasn't quite that bad, but since there were no speed limits, I drove too fast and didn't waste a lot of time getting there. I used to love to drive.

In LA however, during rush hour, there is no place to go. No amount of weaving in and out of traffic will actually get you anywhere. Even I don't bother, I just follow the car in front of me and hope it will end soon. Still I often see people weaving in and out trying to get somewhere faster. Now of course if they were to succeed, I'd probably be jealous. But they never do. Needless to say, I hate rush hour traffic.

The point in all this, is that in life people generally really enjoy it when things are moving along smoothly. But, when things are at a standstill, and they just can't seem to get ahead no matter how hard they try, most people feel totally blocked and tend to think that everything in life is bad. This is a very negative attitude, tends to slow us down even more because we aren't alert enough to find our way through. Now this doesn't mean that we should recklessly charge ahead like the guy trying to make time in rush-hour traffic, but it does mean we should keep a positive attitude and be aware enough to recognize an opening when it appears. Sometimes we can become the prisoners of our own viewpoint, if we think it's bad-it's bad. The ability to smile in the face of difficulty is not easy, but if you can do it you certainly will enjoy life more.

Now this all comes up because presently I am near retirement, and I've never been in worse financial shape in my entire life. I had recently fallen prey to a group of online "benefactors" who promised me a great deal but actually delivered very little, for a substantial amount of cash. This caused me to have to dip into my retirement, which had a value that was an all-time low, and get me into a bit of trouble with the credit card companies. Now I can say that things were bad, but I also could take another viewpoint. In April of this year I knew absolutely nothing about the Internet. Since then however, I've built several websites, played in the 30 day challenge, learned all about how to make money online( and how not to), found that I enjoyed writing articles and Hubs, and in a general having a good time. Sure I was lied to and taken for a ride, but it introduced me to a whole world of which I had been previously totally unaware. While I could use the Internet and check my e-mail, I had no idea how much fun it was to actively create things on the web.

Now while I could wallow in the negativity, I find it much more fun to look at the positive side. Unless I receive a great windfall, I can't really do very much about what happened to me, since I really don't have the money to sue them. However on the bright side I'm making headway, slowly but surely, towards recovery. I also have learned how to get all the information I paid so much for, but never actually received, for free. I've also learned who I can and can't trust on the Internet, a lesson well worth learning, so I won't fall victim again.

So I'm now ready to continue my cruise on down the road of life. I have my roadmap and the knowledge of how to plan to avoid rush-hour traffic. After all is said and done, I'd say life is pretty good.