Thinking about the hectic day as it reveals itself, I find
my TODO list gets longer by the minute.
2 kids keep you busy.
Among the list of chores, classes, and obligations that are
steady year round, the crunch of family and friends fall upon us like clockwork. It’s now the holiday season and the demands to
swing by and pick up the perfect gift not only for the seasonal gift exchange,
but also for the stray birthday party that fits into the end of the year chaos
can seem overwhelming at times.
As much as I want to follow the advice of the uber-mom
bloggers and collect all of our seasonal gifts throughout the year, it never
seems to work out that way. Life happens and the opportunity to shop with focus
and meaning (aka without the offspring) is seldom a luxury I get to enjoy, so
here I am at the end of November this year without a wrapped gift hiding in the
closet and only a limited number of weekends available to shop local and find
the right item that will reflect the connection I have with the intended recipient.
That is how my preoccupation with select phone apps was born.
My gateway app was navigation.
I’ve lived in San Diego for the majority of my life and know
my way around fairly well but every once in a while I would be out and about
and need to get from point A to point B inside of timeline X while successfully
acquiring items on list Z before returning to home point C. I’ll share with you that timeline X is never
as long as I need it to be while list Z is 3 times longer than I have time for. This is life, my life.
Since the desire to
find the most efficient route is (of course) paramount, I would pull out the
phone and plug in my destination because looking a Thomas Guide was too
cumbersome (yes, I had a Thomas Guide in my car until just a few months ago…
it was a 2007 version if you must know when that last time it was that I used
it). In the beginning, it was just a
bonus that NAV provided an ETA.
Eventually the ETA became an obsession. I’d watch the minuscule changes in the
arrival time as the traffic lightened or I found my way into the fast or slow
lanes. Every time I would arrive at my destination exactly as predicted my
mild case of anxiety was set at ease and I would not panic at the thought I was
going to be late. I learned quickly
to trust the app and not stray from its instructions for fear of adding multiple
minutes onto my ETA and doing this kept me from driving like an idiot in many
cases since I knew when I would arrive and I could call my meeting if I was
really going to be late instead of not knowing for certain.
I have since stopped using NAV on our morning commute to
school - I mean who really needs to know traffic on .9miles of residential
streets? I do however use it for the
evening ride home from some of my clients.
It tells me which freeway is best and which off-ramp to scoot on and off
of without having to wait for the traffic report on the radio.
Soon I will come up with app that will sync up NAV to the
expense report so at the end of the ride I press one button and it forwards
this trip to my choice of spreadsheets that can be submitted for invoicing or tax
reporting. Maybe after I learn coding I’ll
tackle that.
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