5 Ways I’m Planning on Coping With A 2 Hour Commute
Honestly, I’m almost excited?
With a new job on the horizon and skyrocketing apartment rent, I’ve decided to move into the suburbs instead of living right downtown in the city. Still, with imperfect transit, this is going to be a 2-hour commute.
That’s two hours each way, so almost four hours altogether.
This seems wild, right? Well, as someone who commuted 90 minutes (so 1.5 hours a day) during her undergrad, this is nothing new.
This time, I’m equipped with systems and strategies to maximize my enjoyment and minimize my pain.
[1] Podcasts
Can you believe that I commuted for four whole years in my undergrad years and didn’t actually explore podcasts until I entered grad school? I used to just listen to music on the way to and from school, which proved to be a terrible idea because I started hating specific songs from a specific era, particularly if they were associated with a particularly stressful exam or subject.
Enter podcasts.
With new podcasts, I’m introduced to new and exciting information on a variety of topics. I already have a healthy selection of at least 20 podcasts that I subscribe to, each churning out new episodes on a regular basis. According to my podcast app, I have 5213 episodes I’ve yet to listen to, which totals up to 2572 hours of listen time.
In my current routine, where I listen to podcasts for the 30 minutes that it takes me to get ready in the morning, it’s a drop in the ocean. I actually feel a little sad sometimes that I’m not catching up on the amazing new updates from my favourite podcasts.
With a 2-hour commute (and maybe 4 hours in total) up ahead, I’m actually really excited to finally catch up on all of this amazingly produced content.
[2] Audiobooks
Audiobooks aren’t a new invention but they’re a relatively new introduction to my life. In particular, I only realized my library offered audiobook lending at the start of the pandemic. This system of audiobook borrowing is incredible because:
- I can rest my eyes and simply listen to the writing (which is important because I spend almost all of my working day staring at a screen)
- It auto-returns!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (There are no amount of exclamation points that truly embody how convenient this is to me.)
My only problem in the past is that audiobooks are on average eight to 12 hours of time, but they’re typically due within two weeks. If I channeled one lunch-hour a day towards audiobooks, I could typically finish one book every two weeks. However, too often, lunch meetings have become a regular occurrence and I haven’t actually finished a book in a period of time now.
No one can ask to meet me during my commute (at least, I hope that’s true), and now I have four uninterrupted hours to simply listen to my favourite audiobooks.
[3] Writing
Some of my best and most poetic writing was done during my undergrad years. This is saying a lot because I write and publish poetry often now, but only a fraction of it truly mimics the quality of what it used to be. Unfortunately, due to a lack of a backup system, I lost everything that I wrote during those fruitful years.
Thus, in these commutes to come, I’m looking forward to writing while I commute. Though I can’t spend the whole time writing because of motion sickness, I find that this actually helps my writing. It forces me to look up and be mindful of my surroundings before returning to writing my piece, creating mandatory breaks that I can’t really find elsewhere.
Plus, writing on mobile changes the way I write in unique ways, just as handwritten poetry or writing using my laptop and a really good keyboard does too.
Though I’m trying to be realistic in saying that I won’t spend all four hours of commute time writing, I’m also realizing that there can be so much opportunity in this time period for me to write in a new and innovative way too.
[4] Sleeping
While a four-hour commute time sounds daunting, I can’t help but share that I actually miss this gratuitous nap time. I know, I know, not everyone can sleep on public transit. I can, and it’s magical. I’m going to capitalize on this skill like no tomorrow.
If work starts at 8 am, it means that I have to be at the bus station by 6 am. With my slow-to-rise morning routine that cannot be shortened no matter how much I try, this means I have to wake up at 5 am again. Yet, in the past, when I’ve been a part of the “5 am morning squad”, I felt this pressure to simply be awake and productive the whole time through. It makes the day super long, without restful breaks.
Similarly with the evening rush, even if I might have to stand the whole two hours, I embody this weird magic within me in being able to nod right off, provided I have some structural support. Back in my uni days, this would include a heavy backpack with 3–4 textbooks and a “lunchbox” that could sometimes be filled with 2–3 meals a day. Hopefully, with work, I’d pack light and make this process even easier.
In a unimodal sleep world, I’ve come to miss the excuse to have a midday nap. I know, I know, I could just have a nap in the middle of the day without being jostled around. But, in a way, being jostled around in a car is actually oddly soothing and conducive to the midday rest that I miss. You know how kids sleep extra well in car rides? It’s like that, except for commutes. I miss that.
[5] Idle Existing or People Watching
One final thing I’m looking forward to with such a long commute is the idle existing or people watching that I don’t quite get to do anymore. Sure, I still encounter people on my walk to and from school right now, but it’s not the same. These are more passing encounters. When you’re at a bus stop, or on public transit, you get to witness people for a longer duration.
Especially as I’m wrapping up a chapter of my life in closing a microfiction project that I had, I think this time to people watch will help me write better. It’s the observation that’s necessary.
Especially with the pandemic, there aren’t many opportunities to people watch. Plus, I’m still quite COVID-anxious, which is something I’m working through. So, in efforts to manage that for a reality of commuting a really long time, I want to make this fun. I want to reframe my existence alongside the necessary crowds as a learning opportunity to observe the world through new eyes.
How do people walk? Dress? Has space changed in our new ways of interacting; are writers incorporating these aspects into their fiction? I wonder.
In the upcoming days, perhaps you’ll see more fiction about character sketches or location “imagines”, so I let my thoughts wander, inspired by real people I encounter on public transit. Fictional poetry, here I come!
Writing This Really Activated A Sense of Wonder
I’m really glad I took the time to sit down and write this article today because despite everyone’s shocking reaction to my decision, I’m secretly excited.
For one, I’m saving a ton of money, so this was a wise financial choice that will snowball into something bigger. Secondly, I think there’s a joy that I’ve come to make out of commuting that isn’t often discussed. It’s almost taboo, to enjoy it when so many suffer from this experience. Yet, when I moved to a walkable place, I found myself missing this idle time.
Perhaps, there’s this sense of nostalgia that I have for a past that actually wasn’t pleasant at all. Maybe I’ll finally remember the terrible parts (like the time someone, pre-pandemic, tried to lick me on public transit) when I get back into the routine.
I’m hoping that finding this space will help me highlight the parts that I’m excited for. While it won’t erase the weird and terrible parts (wait, can I just reiterate the earlier parenthesis that someone tried to lick me on public transit???) that may emerge, I hope that these negative parts also won’t take away from what I genuinely grew to miss with time.
Hi, I’m Lucy Dan 蛋小姐 (she/her/她) and maybe I’m also exaggerating with the 2-hour commute. I think it has the potential to be a 90-minute commute, if all of the transit schedules line up. However, the later into the evening it gets, the sparser the schedule, so if I were to leave the city at a later time because I hung out with a friend for dinner or something, it would definitely take me longer to get home.
