v-Fluence Blog

I'll Take Driving Online Over Driving on the Road Any Day

For me, the thought of driving triggers images of potential catastrophes and an ache in my stomach that can only be interpreted as raw fear. I am not alone in this trepidation. A search on Google quickly reveals information about amaxophobia, a fear so intense that people avoid riding or driving in vehicles, a story about a woman who is so afraid of driving that she walks five miles to work, even in middle of a snowstorm, and another one about a software engineer who refuses to drive more than 40mph.

For most of my life, I've been able to hide my fear of driving by relying on friends and family for rides. However, when I graduated college and began using the Twin Cities transit system for transportation to and from work, I decided that my brushes with hypothermia as a result of waiting at bus stops were becoming a little too close for comfort. Resolved to overcome my apprehension, I purchased my own vehicle.

In hindsight, beginning my driving career at the start of a Minnesota winter was probably not the best idea. Within months, I had suffered a tire blowout, a snowdrift and countless spinouts on ice. Soon, I was dreading my 30-minute commute to work, which I spent either hunched over my steering wheel or jerking at the sign of every car that came close to mine. The time and energy spent on those commutes began to take its toll.

When I relocated to San Diego last summer, the one thing that everyone included in their farewells was a warning about California's traffic. I nodded and thanked them, hiding my shaking knees. I could barely manage the back roads of Minnesota, how could I handle driving to work through the maze of the California highway system?

Luckily, this problem was solved when I started working at v-Fluence, a predominantly virtual public affairs and marketing company in which employees, for the most part, work out of their homes. As such, I now save at least an hour commuting and donít have to face the concrete jungle of freeways every morning.

Instead, I can allocate the time and energy that had previously been spent on commuting into my work and am more relaxed, focused and productive. On occasion, I even drive to one of my favorite coffee shops in downtown San Diego to work in the warm, California sun while planes roar above my head as they descend into the nearby San Diego airport.

But let's not get started on my thoughts about that mode of transportation.

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