I don’t have a good sense of direction. I get lost really easily. Knowing that, you would think I would always be careful to allow myself plenty of time to travel from one location to another for appointments, to meet up with friends, or to pick up my kids. But, no. I don’t have a good sense of time, either.
While I consciously understand that it takes 15 minutes to get to an appointment location, unconsciously, at some deep cellular level, I truly believe that somehow, while traveling physically through space, I can also travel metaphysically through time to arrive on time at my destination, even if I didn’t leave the house until I was already supposed to be there.
My college-age daughter, on the other hand, likes to be early everywhere. Very early. A half hour early, in some cases. This is probably a direct reaction to having a mom who tended to drop her off a few minutes late for a thing or tended to be the last mom to pick her up when a thing was over. I feel really sad and ashamed about that. But, I feel really proud that my daughter broke my self destructive patterns. I want to be the one my daughter admires and tries to emulate. But, in this case, I admire her. I want to emulate her.
I’m trying to learn to appreciate “the early”. I am even learning to use those few minutes that I am early for an appointment or meeting as a reward time to play on my phone. I don’t know if I can ever fully change. It’s certainly too late to spare my daughter the embarrassment and discomfort she felt by being late for things as a child. But, the way I see it, I’m just now into my second half of adulthood. It’s not too late to try to improve on myself. I could still make my daughter proud of me, maybe.
I had an important success one morning last week. I had to attend a 9:00 am training class at a location 1.5 hours from my home (during rush hour traffic and through road construction detours). I made it with 17 minutes to spare. A miracle! I had enough time to sit in my car for a few minutes and post this photo to Instagram before I went inside. It was wonderful!
Do you struggle with travel time? Tell me about it in the comments!