I live in Newark, Delaware, USA and generally work in an office approximately 12 miles away (~19km) in Wilmington, Delaware, USA. I usually drive a car to and from work during rush hour which either requires using Interstate 95 or, when there's an accident, a series of smaller local highways. Travel time varies wildly from day-to-day, but in general the morning commute takes approximately 20 minutes while the evening commute takes about 30-45 minutes.
The layout of the roads, design of on-ramps and off-ramps, and very common merging and unmerging of major high-speed freeways and slower highways with traffic lights, sometimes with multiple others happening within just a few hundred yards, causes a lot of poor driving habits to build up. Drivers in the state are very greedy about their position "in line" and will tailgate aggressively to prevent traffic from merging more gracefully. It infuriates drivers behind me that i always leave an adequate amount of space between my car and the one ahead of me, especially if an on-ramp is coming up to merge. The radio calls these "volume delays" but they are more accurately called "asshole delays."
Yep, that's intentional. I pointed it at my office building which, with a moderate amount of searching, would be easy for anybody to find when looking me up by username.
Count me among those unwilling to be featured in an email, but I made this discovery very recently:
I have been dealing with a tremendous amount of anxiety for as long as I can clearly remember. After decades of a vicious cycle of procrastination and depression my ability to perform at an adequate level was entirely gone. I had this way about me that allowed me to appear very busy while accomplishing a criminally small number of tasks and never keeping any promises. Fortunately (or unfortunately) I lucked out by joining a team that was set up to enable this to continue.
After almost 10 years on the team and some treatment for the anxiety I realized that I was performing at less than 10% of my comfortable capacity. With the anxiety lessened, I could go back and trace the path it carved through my life. Regardless of performing in a way that should have had me fired years ago I still managed to be, by far, the most productive, well-informed, and pragmatic member of the team. I spoke with my manager and confirmed that he believed all of this and that, amazingly, he was actively moderating the amount of work sent my way because he was convinced I was overworked.
I had a sudden crisis because this meant that, as an entire team, we had trained ourselves to ignore how poor of a job we have been doing. If my 10% of capacity is that good then the entire team was underwater. Thankfully, my manager didn't try and deny it when I brought it to his attention. He also didn't notice it going on, but once I said the words it was like the clouds parted.
I predict some staffing and management style changes coming pretty soon. I'll call that a happy ending or at least a hopeful future!
The layout of the roads, design of on-ramps and off-ramps, and very common merging and unmerging of major high-speed freeways and slower highways with traffic lights, sometimes with multiple others happening within just a few hundred yards, causes a lot of poor driving habits to build up. Drivers in the state are very greedy about their position "in line" and will tailgate aggressively to prevent traffic from merging more gracefully. It infuriates drivers behind me that i always leave an adequate amount of space between my car and the one ahead of me, especially if an on-ramp is coming up to merge. The radio calls these "volume delays" but they are more accurately called "asshole delays."