Friday, May 1

Tuning Out

Driving my route each afternoon/evening, I have too much time to think about stuff. I admit, for those that don't have the time, it probably sounds like a luxury, but to those of us that have it ... it can be brutal sometimes. Often, I begin to second-guess myself. Things like: did I shut and latch the back door before I took off from the last stop? Did I remember to load up all the correct bins of parts for the techs I am delivering to? Did I grab that one big part that was off to the side? I will sit and stew over whatever issue until I can get off the freeway, or get a chance to find a spot easy to turn around in on a side street, and check.

There is also quite a bit of time with no one to converse with, so the radio is the next best thing. I generally start out on our local news talk radio show (KTAR 92.3 if you are interested) as they not only do a quick update of news headlines about every 15 minutes, also a quick traffic report of the Valley freeways, and many times, accidents on side streets as well. The traffic reports really help in deciding if I need to change my route due to closure, etc. In between the traffic reports, I listen to whatever the afternoon (or morning if heading to work) show people talk about - usually current events.

But lately, I have just been tuning them out.

Why? It is depressing. Riots in Baltimore for an unexplained death of a person that was in police custody. Any candidate running for presidency (my opinion, because I think most of the ones I have heard of so far are idiots). The news about the earthquake in Nepal hasn't been bad, but I do get tired of hearing about how the death toll just keeps increasing. I mean, it's not surprising it will increase.

Then the talk show hosts go off in tangents - probably because they have nothing else to fill the empty space: the mom that went and pulled her son out and was beating him on the head in Baltimore - was she a good parent or a bad one? The local trial of whomever: Arias, Hunter .... blah blah blah. Anything having to do with Sheriff Arpaio - man, that gets really boring.

After 4pm, I usually am out of the downtown area for the evening, and switch to one of the local country stations... I can't stand listening to that crap until 7, and then have Dave Ramsey on.

Maybe I should just shut the radio off, and enjoy the quiet ....

... but then I think, did I close the panel door after my last stop? Did I forget something?

PeacE

1 comment:

Joe said...

Windshield time is harder than people think. I have taken to listening to audio books lately on long drives. There are apps that offer free books, if you don't mind the classics. I listened to Jack London's the se wolf on my drive to and back from Omaha this week.

I'm sick of Rush, the NFL draft bores me. I can only listen to music for so long.

Then the brain kicks in and soon the dogs of depression are nipping at my heels.

I feel your pain brother.