By Greg Harms, LCPC, CADC

This past July, I started a new chapter of my life by spending part of my week in Indiana, completing my doctoral internship in Psychology at IU Health. This has required me to drive back and forth between Chicago and Indianapolis each week.

Normally, it’s not a bad drive. However, in the second week, I got on I-65 and started to make my way home, only to see traffic signs announcing that I-65 was closed for an emergency, and all traffic was diverted off of the highway onto a two-lane rural road, itself under constructions, running through the middle of a cornfield, with stop signs about every mile.

Four hours later, we finally got back on I-65, and 8 hours after starting, I finally arrived home in Chicago, finishing what should have been a 4 hour trip at most.

Curious about what emergency could have been worth four hours stuck behind a line of semis on a road clearly not designed for them, I Googled I-65 when I got home and found out that Indiana had known for TEN YEARS prior to that weekend that part of it was sinking. Yet, they chose to do nothing about it, passing annual budget after annual budget with no money allocated to fixing the problem.

Finally, the second week I had to start making this commute, the road suddenly began sinking at a faster rate and Indiana finally realized that something had to be done. Unfortunately, because this decision was made at the last minute in response to an emerging crisis, the only available options for traffic were not conducive to easy travel.

Semi trucks had to travel through cornfields on two lane roads, many of them under construction, with frequent stop signs along the route, grinding traffic to a halt for everyone in the region. Think of all the wasted hours and money spent on fuel for trips that took 3-4 times as long as they should have.

Having explored the back roads of Indiana every week since to find a better alternative, I’ve had a lot of time to think about this predicament. While Indiana may not have wanted to spend the money 10 years ago when it first learned of the problem to fix it, think of how much more money was lost now as a result of the problem continuing to get worse for the past ten years. Simply turning a blind eye to the problem did not fix it despite the obvious beliefs of the state’s politicians that it would.

While it is easy to blame them for allowing this to happen, I wonder how many of us, and them, do things like this in our personal lives on a regular basis?

How many times have we put off going to the doctor despite having a nagging feeling that something just isn’t right? How often do we see the scale moving in the wrong direction and instead of getting up and exercising regularly, we just stop getting on the scale? How many times do we decide to stay in a job we hate with a disrespectful boss rather than put ourselves out there and start networking to find a better job? How many arguments have we had with our significant other ending with sweeping it under the rug rather than going to therapy to learn a new way to communicate?

My guess is we all have a sinking I-65 somewhere in our lives and have chosen the same tactic as the state of Indiana to deal with it; do nothing until it can’t be ignored anymore and then spend more resources on it to deal with the crisis it is causing than would have been spent addressing it early on.

Finally, last weekend, I was able to drive home on the newly opened I-65, after several weeks of navigating back roads around the official detour, spending only 5-6 hours on what should have been a 4 hour trip, which was still better than the 8 hour official detour but still an unnecessary 1-2 hours that could have been spent on more productive pursuits. While I’m glad to finally have my commute back to 4 hours, I’m still a little bitter (in case the tone of this blog post hasn’t made my feelings clear) about all that wasted time and gas, which even in Indiana, is not cheap.

However, instead of chalking up to yet more incompetence on the part of Indiana’s state legislature, which has found itself in the news for all the wrong reasons a lot this year, for reasons besides the I-65 debacle, I’m going to make the experience count for something and tackle my own I-65 rather than letting it continue to sink. I strongly encourage all of you to do the same. Think about what change you’ve been putting off for far too long and take this chance to do something about it.

It doesn’t have to be anything radical, but starting to do something will help to minimize the likelihood that it will blow up into a crisis later. Make that doctor’s appointment, schedule a trial workout at a gym, create your CareerBuilder profile, or have a heart to heart with your significant other about the need for outside help. If you find that you just can’t bring yourself to make that specific change, try seeing a therapist.

Therapists are trained to help with developing motivation, setting goals, and developing personal accountability. With a little help, you might have your own I-65 fixed in less time than it took Indiana and you’ll be a lot happier as a result.