I am blogging less (and why I started driving to work)

If you haven’t noticed, I haven’t blogged quite as much recently. No Rob, the reason isn’t Twitter but rather the fact that I stopped taking the train and started driving to work instead.

You heard that right, with gas approaching all time highs I decided to do pretty much the opposite of most commuters. The main reason was to prevent burnout and get some time back for myself and my family. Well driving is saving me about two hours a day now.

My old commute took from about 6:45 AM until 6:30+ PM. I would drive to the train station, wait for the train, take the train downtown, meet some colleagues at a shared work car, drive to the office together and then reverse the whole process at the end of the day. It was fine for awhile, but it started to drag. I had to get to the train station early enough to get a parking space (about 30 minutes before the train arrived) and then I’d have to stand on the platform early enough to get a decent seat on the train (about 15 minutes before the train arrived.) As more and more people started riding the train, conditions got more crowded and I started getting fed up with humans in general.

The sick people sneezing and coughing everywhere, the assholes who had to speak at top volume on their cellphones, the people who would sit like idiots and cause congestion in the car, the people who had to have loud conversations without regard for those around them, the pushing and shoving to get on or off a car. It was all getting to be too much, so I decided to see how the drive would be instead.

I was pleasantly surprised actually. My 28 mile drive takes about 45 minutes or less on average now. My train ride itself took 50-60 minutes, so I’m saving time over the ride alone, and if you take into account everything, I really am saving about two hours a day. So that means I’m eating breakfast with my wife and daughters most mornings now, and a couple days a week I’m allowed to work a flex schedule and do 6AM to 2PM. That gets me home earlier to spend time with the family or on days they are out and about, I get to spend some time relaxing myself. In all, it’s been wonderful. Grey is much less burned out.

Sure, it’s more expensive, and some days it takes over an hour to drive in or home, but by the same token some days it only takes 30 minutes. The main thing is, on average, I have two extra hours free during a typical workday. You would think that might translate into MORE blogging, but you would be wrong. I’m not captured in a metal tube for nigh on 2 hours a day, so the freedom doesn’t support extra blogging, it supports extra living.

Bizarre, I know!