maps

i love walking around the city of san francisco. maybe not when i'm in a hurry or the weather is gross. but give me a cool, sunny day when the sky is clear and i have a few errands to liesurely run, and i'll gladly dust off the old walking flip-flops and zig zag my way from neighborhood to neighborhood.

today, as i was doing such a thing (prepping for my trip to FLA for the holly-days), i started thinking, okay noticing, that there is often a larger guiding force helping me choose my route. i noticed this because when i start out on my walk, i usually plan in advance the streets i'm going to walk along (optimizing for least number of hills or shortest distance)... until, lo and behold, i find my self waltzing along a new street! and often a street i've not waltzed along before.

it's fun to do this spontaneous-course-choosing, but it's rarely my own doing that takes me down these roads. the guiding force i speak of is called (are you ready?)... the traffic light.

i noticed today that i usually let the ebbs and flows of the lights take me where i want to go and (more often than not), their chosen course will trump my originally planned course. eventually, i make it where i'm headed. and i hardly ever go further out of my way than i need to. the lights easily answer all the little questions for me, and it's rather pleasurable.

do i cross here, or turn? depends on the light.
do i stay on this side of the sidewalk or the other? depends on the light.

and so, i began to wonder if there is a traffic light in my life. am i the kind of person who takes the course that allows me to continually saunter along to my next grand goal with the least number of glitches (i.e. moments waiting for the light to change)? or do i charge head first along my original path, never taking time to look left or right? to find those hidden secret streets? i'm not really sure. i think i'm a light-follower, not a strict-course planner. at least, i kind of hope i am.