mylsolved and the commute nobody applauds

I keep thinking about how we treat driving like background noise, like it’s not a thing we do so much as a thing that happens to us—traffic, lights, the endless slow crawl. But the truth is, getting into a car is choosing a tiny private reality, and if you’re honest, it’s a surprisingly emotional one. The word mylsolved popped into my head the other day as a reminder that we’re always trying to “solve” our lives with systems—routines, apps, schedules, shortcuts—while the road remains stubbornly unsolved and deeply human.

Cars are weirdly intimate. Not in a romantic way (please don’t make it weird), but in a “this is where I’ve cried into a steering wheel at least once” way. The car is where we rehearse arguments, practice apologies, listen to the same song until it stops hurting, and then keep listening anyway. The outside world sees the vehicle. The inside world is a moving confessional.

The illusion of control (and the reality of other people)

Driving sells you this idea: you are in control. Hands at ten and two, eyes forward, responsible adult vibes. But control is mostly theater. You can be careful and still get cut off. You can be patient and still end up late because someone else decided a turn signal was a personal weakness. You can follow every rule and still be forced to trust strangers piloting thousands of pounds of momentum next to your face.

That’s the part that feels like a social experiment nobody consented to. We’re all out there, together, pretending we’re not. Cars create distance, and then force proximity. You’re isolated in a metal box, but also inches from a hundred other metal boxes, each containing someone’s bad day, someone’s distraction, someone’s private panic. If you’ve ever wondered why the road brings out people’s worst impulses, it’s because the car turns shame into anonymity and stress into speed.

Sometimes I think the whole commute is just a daily test of whether you still believe in other humans. And sometimes the test is graded by someone merging like they’re auditioning for a disaster documentary.

Maintenance as a metaphor (because of course)

Owning a car is like adopting a responsibility that cannot speak but will absolutely punish you for neglect. Skip the small stuff long enough and it stops being small. There’s something humbling about that. The vehicle doesn’t care about your intentions. It cares about reality: friction, heat, wear, time. And the thing about time is it always wins.

We don’t talk enough about the emotional side of maintenance—the quiet anxiety of a new sound, the denial that maybe you imagined it, the bargaining (“If I turn the music up, is it still a problem?”). This is where mylsolved feels relevant again, because we want tidy solutions. We want the certainty of a checklist. But a car is a relationship with entropy, and entropy does not accept coupons.

The healthiest approach I’ve found is to treat maintenance like self-respect, not like punishment. It’s not “ugh, I have to do this.” It’s “I’m keeping this thing safe and functional because I live inside its consequences.” That doesn’t make it fun. It just makes it honest.

Cars and the stories we tell ourselves

People say they “love cars,” and I never know whether they mean engineering, aesthetics, or the feeling of escaping their own lives at 65 miles per hour. Cars have become symbols—of adulthood, freedom, status, competence. But symbols are dangerous because they start demanding things from you.

If your car is your identity, then every scratch is an insult. Every breakdown feels like personal failure. Every older model is shame you can park in a driveway. That mindset is exhausting. It turns transportation into a performance review.

Here’s what I wish we normalized: a car can just be a tool. Useful. Imperfect. Not your moral worth. Not your proof that you “made it.” Not your excuse to treat strangers like obstacles. If your day is falling apart, the road doesn’t need to fall apart with it.

When I think about mylsolved, I think about how we chase optimization. Faster routes. Better mileage. Cleaner interiors. But optimization without reflection is just anxiety wearing a productivity costume. Sometimes the “best” drive is the one where you arrive without turning into someone you don’t like.

The small kindnesses that keep the road livable

There’s a version of driving that feels like civic cooperation instead of combat. Let someone merge. Leave space. Use the signal like it’s not humiliating. Don’t treat a parking lot like a jungle survival challenge. These actions are tiny, but they create a mood, and moods spread.

And yes, I know—this sounds like a soft plea into the void. But the void is full of cars, so maybe it matters.

I’ve started thinking of good driving as a kind of quiet ethics. You can’t fix everything. You can’t control traffic. You can’t control the weather. But you can control whether you add aggression to the mix. You can control whether you make the road worse for someone having an already terrible day.

That’s the only “solve” I trust. Not perfection. Not dominance. Just small choices that reduce harm. In that sense, mylsolved becomes less about “winning” the commute and more about surviving it with your humanity intact.

And if that sounds dramatic, fine. Driving is dramatic. It’s just that nobody claps when you do it well.