The internet taught me to drive stick: Traffic...

I've been driving stick now for a little bit and I'd like to think that I'm doing pretty amazing good so far. I went stall-less around town in traffic to the movies and sushi yesterday, but I did rookie it and stall today in the heavy stop and go traffic. Since it was at pretty much a walking pace, it only resulted in the guy behind me giving a stern face palm through the rear view mirror. At least he didn't have a hot daughter sitting next to him to see how smooth I am.

Turns out traffic is my enemy.

I drive in it to and from work, all day long and it's a lot more work than I'm used to - but I'm guessing cars these days are built to handle this type of every day wear and tear cause if not I'm screwed. Today was the first time I've stalled in it traffic, but I've been brave/dumb enough to drive in it since Friday. So here's the question: What's the best technique?

Other than leaving ample room and taking it easy, I want to reduce clutch stress and unnecessary shifting as much as possible. I don't think neutral is a good idea but I don't want to be slipping in and out of 1st doing a crawl either...It seems like just a ton of shifting between 1st and 2nd and stop.

Another smooth thing that I've been doing is starting out in second, that's pretty lazy right? It requires a little more gas than 1st but you sound more badass it's more a result of canceling the stop and having to get moving in second and not down shift.

I hear people skip gears like 1-3, 3-5 because they're lazy too, but then I've also heard of a guy buying a new Civic Si because he went from 6-2 coming off the highway during a test drive...FTW!

Anyway, I think there's only one main hurdle left to conquer on my way to manual transmission competency...or rather adequacy: The Hill...I'm not talking slight slopes but a legitimate crazy ass hills like in Montreal. We'll see how that goes...