Finding a Silver Lining: The Commute

I commute to work; nearly an hour each way.

And I complain about it a lot. I live in the city that I work in. If I drove it would take 15-20 minutes. Because I take the bus, it takes 50. That’s just bus travel time.

Commuting has the added benefit of exposing you to all kinds of a-holes too: people that have zero consideration for other people’s personal space; folks that don’t believe in deodorant; individuals that like to shake their umbrellas out all over you.

If you’ve ever stumbled on my twitter account, you may have noticed that every once in a while, I get into it with the transit company.

My particular bus schedule is insanely unreliable. I’ve brought this up since I don’t particularly love waiting an extra 20 minutes for a bus that may or may not show up on a Friday afternoon. I’ve called, left official complaints, tweeted at them for a quicker response, but it’s still a thing that evidently does not actually matter.

And let’s not even get started on the surly effing bus drivers I deal with on the regular.

But this is not meant to be a post about all the things that are wrong with our transit system (no one has that kind of time). My fiancé had knee surgery last week so he’s off work until the end of the month, which leaves the car free for me to take to work.

I thought about all the ways that I could spend the time I’d save by not taking the bus. Mainly they involved sleeping and more quality time at home (with Netflix obviously). I was excited to leisurely drive in, stop by a Starbucks where they just get me, park in the underground of my office building and not have to worry about all the stuff I had to carry because I wouldn’t have to carry it very far.

But somewhere in my saved time, I lost something awesome: two hours of reading time. Yesterday, in a whirl of traffic sitting, Starbucks sipping and paying for parking, I didn’t have a chance to take a time out from life and spend some quality time with a book. And I really noticed it. I came home completely burnt out.

I was so looking forward to starting Lainey Gossip’s Listen to the Squawking Chicken and I didn’t get that chance until I went to bed last night! I took the bus this morning. And despite the crowd of other sleep deprived commuter zombies, I enjoyed the ride because I took it with Lainey.

So even though a lot of the time I hate taking the bus and think about how much better it would be if I could get home faster, for now I’m going to sit back and read while someone else deals with rush hour traffic.