You can’t avoid traffic lights, at least not if you live within any community beyond a standard size.
I don’t know about you but I don’t like traffic lights much. They’re always getting in my way. Messing with my progress when I’m trying to move forward. Slowing me down when I want to speed up. Making me stop and wait and wait and wait and wait.
I suppose I understand why we need them. I can see how if we left the traffic to its own devices, it would lead to an absolute nightmare of crazy, disorganised driving, not to mention frequent crashes and more than a handful of fatalities. Still, it doesn’t make it any easier when you’re stopped at a red light, drumming your fingers on the steering wheel and counting down until it changes to green. It might only take several seconds, but do several seconds ever take so long? I reckon if they did some kind of study on the passage of time, they would discover that time spent stopped at a traffic light takes longer to pass than any other time.
Being on the road is not the only time I’m required to deal with the reds and ambers and greens of traffic lights. It seems to be a big thing at work as well. Any project I’m working on seems to have its own set of traffic lights applied and I’m constantly having to negotiate the changing of the colours. If we’re green, then we’re full speed ahead. But any time we hit any kind of roadblock, the light switches to red, and then all kinds of emergency manoeuvres are required in order to get it back to green. And as for any projects in amber, that basically means I have absolutely no idea what the status actually is.
Clearly, there are some places I can’t avoid traffic lights, such as work and the road. But in any other aspects of life, I do what I can to avoid the damn things. In my personal life, I try to ensure there are no traffic lights blocking my path. True, there are often roadblocks I need to negotiate, but I always try to make sure I’m moving forward. And I definitely try to apply this philosophy to my writing. I don’t want to ever find myself getting held up by any kind of obstacle. Full steam ahead is the way I want to work.
So, until next time, I hope there are no traffic lights blocking your way. And if you ever encounter any, I hope they turn green without any delay.
Posted by Jonathan Gould and tagged as