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Commuting and anger

I had an interesting commute this morning.  I checked the status of the trains and I checked the traffic before I left the house at 4:35am.  At 4:39am a BART train caught on fire, resulting in the closure of 5 east bay stations and cutting off Dublin from San Francisco.  I didn't know that until I got to the BART station though, so I wasted time walking into the station, only to find "you can't get there from here" being broadcast.  I only had enough gas to do a round trip from Dublin to Tracy, not to SF, so I had to get gas, then I got caught up in extra heavy traffic at the Bay Bridge as thousands of my fellow BART riders tried to get across the Bay.

In times past I know I would have been all upset and angry and bent out of shape, muttering and cursing BART and the rotten drivers on the road.  Today it was pretty minimal, for me :-)  The most annoying thing is that it's costing me an extra $10 to be at work today between bridge toll and parking.  That's a lunch!

This Angry Gnome has been working pretty hard on not being so Angry, and with the help of the Holy Spirit things are starting to look better on that front.  I have long had a problem with blurting out the first thing that comes into my head, especially when I'm running into problems, like a commute delay or something at work not going the way it is supposed to go.  That's not good because the first thing that comes into my head is usually curses and foul language and condemnation of whoever I imagine to be at fault for my difficulties at the time.  Recently I've begun trying to simply take a breath and not react out loud for a few moments.  At first it didn't work, but with prayer and paying attention to what's really going on around me it's gradually gotten better.

I have no idea if this is noticeable to anyone who is not living inside my head, but it sure is obvious to me :-)

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