What makes me enjoy my commute

Commuting is the bane of many people's working life. It extends the workday. It steals precious time we might otherwise spend on other activities or with loved ones. And rush hour traffic is a serious pain in the butt. One of the things I struggled most with when deciding to move out to Seattle was the daily commute it would involve. Having lived for the past three years with my feet and a bicycle as my main modes of transportation hardly even taking the bus, I dreaded the thought of immersing myself in the stress, frustration and road rage it involved. I was so disturbed by this notion that when people asked if I would be buying a car once I moved, my reply was a firm, "Absolutely not."

I initially had illusions of self-sufficience and me biking to work but soon I learned of the floating bridge across Lake Washington with no shoulder which I would have to cross with freeway traffic during my 10 mile journey from Seattle out to the suburbs on the east side. This in combination with many hills, rain and the budget of a fresh-out-of-school-student-who-just-moved-to-a-new-city helped me decide to take advantage of the free bus pass I was eligible for through work.

Today my commute takes me somewhere short of an hour if traffic is good. It involves one transfer and about a ten minute walk from the freeway to my office. On the way home, it often takes longer. I find myself unwilling to stand idly waiting for my second bus and often walk a good portion of the remaining leg home before it eventually appears. I join the crowd of tired and hardly social commuters cramming onto the bus before the sun has begun its journey or after it has already reached its end. I clutch my latest book in hand and brace it against the seat in front of me to counter the jostling of the bus. I tune out all the tiredness of the commute around me and enter another world.

I realize that this act is incredibly anti-social. On some level it is no better than taking lunch at your desk or reaching for your mobile phone the moment you find yourself not 100% engaged by your surroundings in order to pretend you have something more important to be doing by contacting someone who is not in the room. Some days I am tempted to shove my book back into my bag and strike up a conversation with the person sitting beside me, invading the commuter bus etiquette's well constructed personal bubble. I think it would be nice to have friends on the bus-- maybe that goes back to the days of sitting with your best friends on your way to school or my very newness in the city but so far I have shyed away from crossing that line. There is a silence on the bus which when broken, everyone seems mildly preturbed by and I have not been ready to break that unwritten rule. Not yet at least.

I was never an avid reader. Just at the age when I should have been getting into reading I got into a sledding accident (funny that this comes so directly after the last post) and got terrible headaches all the time. Amongst the many things that aggrivated them were kid-basics as simple as turning in a circle or reading. As a consequence, it was a passtime I never enjoyed and later discovered I was a slow reader. I also missed a great portion of classic literary vocabulary growing up and am still making up for it. Luckily, despite the hour long journey to and from the suburban office every day, I am able to arrive mostly unscathed and happy that I have a dedicated time every day to read.

I am stoked (and stocked) for the upcoming weeks. Flying back from Minneapolis, I checked luggage and brought back with me 20 books to keep me entertained. :)