Webster defines commute as "to travel back and forth regularly (as between a suburb and a city)". It makes it sound so pleasant. To travel... like you are going to visit some far away land where magical things happen. They should really alter that definition to include more of the "real world" experience. Here are two of my ideas:
- to sit in an un-ending sea of other cars with the most pissed off other workers in your town for hours per day,
or
- to drive in a car that costs too much to a place that pays me too little to deal with people who should have been evaluated for a mental disorder years ago
I like the second one the best, but I doubt that Webster's will think it's near as amusing as I do. However, after my day at work today, I am likely to be considered one of those mental patients. Luckily, I can almost always come up with something to say... now whether it is witty or intelligent or even remotely legible is a different story. When you drive three hours per day you have a lot of time to think. Why don't I think more about what I am going to blog about that day? I have to admit that most of the time I sit down at my computer with no inspiration to write about anything.
Everyday that I go to work I spend almost three hours of that day in my car. That's twelve hours per week, forty eight hours per month and a whopping 576 hours per year just driving. That is ridiculous when you break it down like that. I really need to come up with a safe way to record my ideas while I am driving.
In the mornings, I leave my house at 5:30am so I am lucky to be awake while I am driving and probably look like a zombie to most of the other people on the road at that time. I have been at this job for almost 9 years and have always worked at a similar time of the morning. You would think that I would used to getting up at the crack of dawn, but no. I still have to prep so much at night time because I am lucky to get up in enough time to get dressed and brush my teeth before heading out the door. If I want coffee and lunch packed, it has to get made or prepped the night before or else it's so long to that. I have enough time in the morning to wake up on the way to work fully to be able to communicate with others if I had to, but luckily since I go in so early I don't have to show how truly anti-morning that I am to anyone until about 7:30 in the morning. And that guy thinks that I am bad at 7:30 - he should talk to me at 5:30!
However, in the evenings, I am really just trying to decompress after a long day at work. Since I live so far away from my work, I work a schedule roughly based off of a 4x10. I actually work 11.5 hours per day three days per week + my three hour commute makes for a LONG DAY. At the end of those days, I am usually perfectly content to sit in total silence while I drive home. Somedays I have the radio on but the majority of the time it's just me and my own thoughts. I really try to not project any of my work stress on my family, so I am grateful for this time to think all my stress and frustration through...This is the time when I usually run into traffic - yes, rush hour traffic is still going on in DFW well into 7pm. I don't mind though because I know that I'm off work and headed home to be with my family. Speaking of - I'm off to spend time with them right now.
-Sara
No comments:
Post a Comment