I will confess that I was born and raised in NJ and I have the East Coast Type A personality that 20 years in CA has not been able to beat down. But I want to be that relaxed person you read about; the person I am not sure I have ever totally met but have heard about so often. So after a recent vacation in Hawaii, a wonderful place where people are just calm and unhurried, I tried to bring that Aloha spirit home with me.

Yesterday when I was driving to work I ended up trapped in a situation where only one car could go through each change of the traffic light. I could write another blog post about how the people that design traffic intersections in the Bay Area apparently only ride public transit, but that would only really be therapeutic for me and not very Aloha. So as I sat there watching the lights turn green and then back to red again while being unable to move forward I worked hard on finding my Aloha spirit. I took deep breathes, I reviewed a gratitude list in my mind, I sang along loudly to music and I thought I had it. But then as I crept closer to getting through the intersection the person a few cars up totally stopped. And it was still a green light! Before I could take a deep and cleansing breathe my hand slammed down on that horn. Mr. Construction Guy to my left looked at me sadly as I hung my head in shame. Mr. Construction Guy to the right tried to get the next person to go through the light, but they couldn’t understand the complicated set up so they sat there. And there we went through another round of lights.

I tried not to berate myself as I drove on to work. I worked on trying to understand what happened. I was only really held up about 10 minutes and it was on a day that I had left early for work so I had plenty of time. I just think it came down to the core NJ girl popping out. I strongly believe in being your authentic self and apparently right now my authentic self is an impatient driver. So I will look today for another way to move slower and more peacefully through my day, knowing that for a Type A former NJ resident that may look a little different that my CA friends expect.  And I am okay with that.