On your mark, get set:

Ever since I had to watch this online training course on driving for work, where the narrator told me that I should be looking "10-15 seconds ahead" when traveling at a high rate of speed on the freeway, I've been thinking a lot about distance and time.

At 80 MPH, I travel 117 feet per second. If I'm peering ahead 10-15 seconds, that means I am looking forward into time, approximately 1,755 feet. That's pretty far into the future, for someone who couldn't plan her way out of a paper bag (should planning my way out of a paper bag become a necessity, however, I do know who to call).

If I do a stupid thing (such as sending an ill-advised email, or saying something too personal to someone who clearly did not wish to know what a jerk/dork I am, or being ugly to Patrick), the next 10-15 seconds are spent biting my nails, hunching my shoulders, daydreaming about smoking a cigarette (which never pays off: I've finally learned that the thrill of wanting one is almost immediately made null by the disgusting reality of actually smoking) - multiply that by the dozens of times per day I do something idiotic, and suddenly you're looking at whole hours which are wasted while I'm a total mess. If instead, I had thought ahead into the future, 10-15 seconds before doing/saying the stupid thing, the whole thing could've been avoided.

Instead of cars or hazards, I visualize my own personal obstacle course of regret and shame.

I mean, I have made some good decisions, but on the other hand: I've made some bad ones. And then there are all the decisions I chose not to make. This is normal, right? The danger is in questioning it, I guess. Happy people do what they do and live with it, good and/or bad. Or is this me, just guessing? Unhappy people, on the other hand (and not wishing to sound like too much of an expert on unhappy people, forgive me if I prevaricate or get a bit dodgy here) - I think unhappy people question it.

• 1,755 feet is about 1/3 of a mile.
• It was 1.25 miles, walking (my usual mode of transportation), from my childhood home to my high school.
• After leaving home, if I walked 1/3 of a mile, taking the route I normally took (using the bike path), I'd end up at (approximately) the bridge that links the school with the Lindberg Park neighborhood across the La Ballona Creek.
• Still not quite at school, and in fact, this was a point at which some days I made the decision just to not go to school at all. This seems important for some reason.

I'm still trying to work out what, if anything, this all means. I think the main idea is that I need to look ahead, 10-15 seconds at a time, and stop questioning my past decisions, and start making better ones in the future. Now starts... now.