Oh how I love Florida!!  I’ve been home for 4 days after being on the road for 28 days.  It was a long stretch and made me miss my family immensely.  Driving a semi can really take a toll on me because of the way other people drive around them. I made a quick video I wanted to share and then leave some thoughts after.  

Driving for a living is really making it challenging to have a more positive outlook on life because I guess I take driving as a serious thing and go out of my way to learn laws and regulations to drive safely. It seems the general motoring public studies enough to take their tests and thats it.  They no longer give a flying F about it after that.  People seem to treat that vehicle their driving like it has some kind of magic properties that makes them safe from any danger in the world. It’s becoming more of an epidemic over the years since I first started driving for a living 25 years ago.  It’s much worse in some area’s of the country than others. (My least favorite place to drive is the West Coast. California, Oregon, Washington.)  The people there seem to treat semi trucks the rudest of any other place in the country.  Although New England is very bad, I think it’s more prevalent on the west coast however.  I notice when people pass trucks on the interstate out west, they do it as close to the truck as possible, where people on the East coast wait a little longer to merge back in front.

So I get pretty upset when I see constant disregard for the people driving these trucks day in and day out.  We live in those trucks for crying out loud for weeks at a time, away from our families and friends. Dealing with rude drivers that treat the semi’s as objects that block their path, slow them down, block their views and they don’t think about the actual human being operating the thing.  Trust me, almost every single person driving these trucks wish they could speed up as fast as you can in your little cars and wish they could stop as fast as your little cars. So the daily disrespect truck drivers get really wears on them and I’m really talking about me with that.  It wears down on me very hard. I drove over the road in the 90′s for a couple of years until I could no longer take the disrespect any longer.  I took a job that didn’t require the hours of driving because I’d reached my limit in what I could tolerate from other people. So I guess having to take this job again after 14 years away from it has made me realize that I don’t want to feel the constant anger and frustration I get from people every day.  I’m so wanting to stop the negative thoughts and feelings I have from it,  that it takes every fiber of my being to be positive.

So I’m taking this time I’m having to drive as a learning tool to be able to cope with the negativity of the world.  I’ve grown leaps and bounds from when I was in my twenties back in the 90′s during my first years doing this job.  The scary thing is….all the negativity and angst in peoples lives here in America seem to be by design by sick wealthy elites. As long as citizens are busy fighting with one another, getting upset at politicians and police and the media constantly pointing out racial tension and religious persecution, the more laws are being made and rights are being taken away.  It’s very hard to get away from the negativity in America unless you actually LOOK for positive things in the world.  The media (Hollywood, Television, News) report and show negative things practically exclusively. They are brainwashing people to live in angst all the while keeping you from truly living a FREE life. We are so busy going to work every day (for longer and longer hours over the years) and paying our bills and working with our kids in their homework and absolute crap they are teaching in schools now a days, we actually have very little time to OURSELVES or for each other. It would go a long way to be able to add an 8th day to the week so that people can get together with their neighbors and family in large groups and smoke a fat joint and forget about working and paying bills and racial discrimination and murders and wars and ALL the negativity of the world.  To just sit down and complement each other for what they do GOOD.

I’d like to make it a commitment to myself and to humanity to be able to say at least one nice thing, or compliment another person (stranger) or co-worker. I mean in reality I should only be saying nothing but positive things to everyone not just once a day.  But I spend so much time trying to deal with feeling angry at other motorists on the road, I avoid all contact with other people just so I don’t have to take my angst out on them. I don’t want to hear about all the negative crap most truck drivers talk about that I spend as little time as possible in the truck stops, other than to get my fuel receipts, get food, take showers or whatever I have to do while at the stops.  At the shippers and receivers I typically talk to whomever I need to get my truck loaded/unloaded and don’t spend time talking to anyone else.  I limit my contact with people in the industry because of all the negativity in it. So now I know how to avoid negativity and bad karma, now it’s time I start to spread good things back into the people I have to deal with.

So I’d like to end on a positive note. Do something kind to someone you know or don’t know. Tell them how much you appreciate something they’ve done or do. Thank you for reading my rant.