Yesterday was a stressful day. Mobile World Congress is taking place in town this week, and as I am completely focused on the first life dApp test we are having on Friday, I forgot about it.
My wife had to fly to Iceland for work and she asked me if I could give her a ride to the airport. I always try to do so when work allows me so I told her I would. The plane was leaving at 11:30 am and she told me being there at 9:30 would be good enough. I am so used to working from home or my parent's house only 2' away from home and not dealing with morning traffic, I completely forgot driving to town at that time of the day is a nightmare.
I woke up very early as usual and after working for a while I realized we would have to deal with traffic so I woke her up slightly earlier than scheduled and told her to hurry up. The airport is on the southern side of the city and we live north, so we have to cross town to reach it. While approaching the city I started seeing traffic was even worse than what I had expected, then I realized MWC24 was taking place this week.
I got off the highway and tried a different path going through the city streets, but was probably worse as I did end up taking the same amount of time but it was way more stressful.
It took me two hours to take her to the airport and come back home, two hours wasted for both of us, plus the thousands of people trapped in traffic as we were. What a waste of time and money for both of us, for everyone on the road, and the global economy.
I know there are company owners who are against remote work, and of course, I understand there are jobs and positions you definitely can not do remotely, but honestly, seeing the waste of time, money, and resources, plus the stress you end up suffering being on the road, feeling you could run late and fighting with other drivers, it just has no sense at all. Not to mention you can run into an accident and suffer a health problem.
As years go by, most of the big cities and smaller ones have started to redefine the space on their streets to make them livable for pedestrians and push away cars. I love that approach as for decades, cities and streets had only motor vehicles as a priority. I believe we should start planning for similar policies from a metroarea perspective, to find ways to fight against world traffic which is probably the biggest death cause if we add accidents, stress, and pollution.