{"id":4334,"date":"2017-06-21T15:33:17","date_gmt":"2017-06-21T22:33:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/?p=4334"},"modified":"2017-06-18T15:38:41","modified_gmt":"2017-06-18T22:38:41","slug":"what-are-you-going-to-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/2017\/06\/what-are-you-going-to-do\/","title":{"rendered":"What are you going to do?"},"content":{"rendered":"
It was becoming clear to me that downtown was for pedestrians. How had I never noticed this before? Perhaps this Friday was worse for foot traffic than usual.<\/h1>\n
I was not on foot. I was driving and I had two errands to do for work. One was to have a meeting with a new business contact, and another was to drop off a large amount of binders and paperwork.<\/h1>\n
I was late to the first meeting. I had forgotten how bad traffic was. The second problem was that I had put the address for where I was meeting the guy in my GPS.<\/h1>\n
This is another issue with downtown. I have to put my car somewhere while I go to the actual destination.<\/h1>\n
I hung a Ricky and found a parking structure. I hoped it wasn’t too far from the skyscraper that was my destination. Also, no chance for validation. One other catch: cash only.<\/h1>\n
Oh yeah. Cash is easy for under-the-table economies. I checked–I had a 20 and a few singles.<\/h1>\n
Hop out and walk the blocks to my meeting. He was generous about how late I was, and I accomplished my mission.<\/h1>\n
Now back to my car. I was starving. But this cash economy had me strapped.<\/h1>\n
Did I drive to the next location? Or walk with the heavy box?<\/h1>\n
I did have a cart\u00a0with wheels.<\/h1>\n
But downtown Los Angeles was hilly.<\/h1>\n
I checked the GPS. It said a mile.<\/h1>\n
A mile.<\/h1>\n
One big factor was that the person I needed to deliver the documents to might not be there, and I might have to walk back with them.<\/h1>\n
It was decision time. What would I choose?<\/h1>\n
I decided to drive.<\/h1>\n
I drove out of the parking garage and got $2.50. I hoped the next parking garage took credit cards. Deeper downtown probably would.<\/h1>\n
The GPS couldn’t get signal inside the parking garage, so I couldn’t tell which direction I was supposed to turn when I got to the street. I turned left, hoping that was it.<\/h1>\n
I had to stop a lot, because of all the passengers going through the crosswalks. Good thing because it took time to get the turns from my GPS.<\/h1>\n
And when I thought I could turn right, I encountered a one-way street.<\/h1>\n
And now came that demon.<\/h1>\n
That demon which says “You made the wrong choice. You should have walked. This is taking too long and it would have been better to do it the other way.”<\/h1>\n
I engaged with that demon for a while, trying to figure out if that were true.<\/h1>\n
Had I made a stupid decision? Was this a dreadful mistake?<\/h1>\n
This kind of demon pops up a lot.<\/h1>\n
He’s my companion on most large projects. Did I do this right? Surely everyone but me would have seen the easy way to do it. Surely I am missing something and I am doing it all wrong.<\/h1>\n
This Friday, I quickly realized it was not helpful. I’d made my decision, and I couldn’t turn back anyway. By car, it was more like 5 miles to get to the next building.<\/h1>\n
But I got there. I would not have gotten then nearly as fast if I had turned around and second-guessed myself.<\/h1>\n
That’s the thing. Making a decision, even if it’s not the best decision of all possible decision in a universe of infinite possibilities, is the most productive thing to do.<\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"