5 Things that you miss about your daily commute.
I contemplated leaving this page blank because there is nothing I miss about commuting. I did tens of thousands of miles of long distance commuting. Audiobooks were an outgrowth of the endless commute and they kept me from losing my mind. They originally came as tapes. Then they became CDs. By the time they went digital, I was no longer working. I didn’t listen to music when I drove. I read books and it was the only way I could survive my often seemingly endless hours of commuting. In my last commuting job, I drove 130 miles in each direction to Pfizer in Groton, Connecticut from Uxbridge in Massachusetts.
I do NOT miss that, not even a little bit. I was tired by the time I got to work and exhausted by the time I got home.
I wonder how one manages to listen to audiobooks in cars these days? Do you put them on cards? Chips? Something you can stick in the modern radios? I don’t know how anyone could survive those long commutes anymore. I know I could not.
So the here are five things I do NOT miss about commuting:
- Having to be up and on the road at four or five in the cold dark to barely get to work on time.
- Being ready to collapse when I got home, then realizing I still had to make dinner.
- Having Garry point out he was much too tired to help me with dinner because he hadn’t sad down yet when I was still on my feet.
- Burning up my car, adding 30,000 miles a year just getting to and from work.
- Getting into traffic jams that lasted three or four hours while barely traveling any distance. At least the long commutes, I was moving. In a lot of commutes, i was just sitting still in traffic.
Still too many cars
I do not miss commuting. I don’t miss the radio, the audiobooks, the insanely long hours. I don’t miss the exhaustion. Actually, I don’t miss working. I do miss the paycheck, but overall, not working is better.
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Categories: #gallery, #Photography, Audiobook, Cars and Trucks, Traffic, Transportation
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All things I also don’t miss about commuting. It’s especially great to be able to finish work and not have to drive home through all the traffic.
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My husband had to special order a CD player when he bought a new car 6 years ago. There was no way he was giving up his audio books!
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When I finally thought I was grown up, I move from my parents house to an apartment in Brooklyn Heights. I loved that little apt. as it allowed me to access the “City” by several subways, all of which were in walking distance. I’d stand on the platform, the train arrived and I would board the train assisted by a pushy little old lady who would plant her folded arms in the small of my back and shove.., I never saw her. After arriving in NY, I would run to the stairway, ascend them 2, 3 at a time and race to my little office/studio at Elektra Records. On the Weekends I worked as a musician and used my car to get to the gigs. I’d hop over the bridges, or descend into the tunnels and navigate the city streets like a gazelle.., I knew them all.., even the Bronx and wildest Brooklyn. The biggest problem living in my lovely little neighborhood was “alternate side parking” which supposedly was to allow street cleaners to clean the streets.., never saw them, but got many parking tickets, which most of us ignored. Even at $5/ea, they could build up and you’d owe a chunk when it came time to renew registration or license. I moved back to LI where racing to one of three LIRR stations was the new commuting dash. The train ride was heaven and where I got the bulk of my reading done, immersed in one fantasy world after another. Boy! do I miss racing around the city, and the daily commuting challenges. BTW, I was in great physical shape as well.
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I miss public transportation — of ANY kind. Having a choice between feet and the car is not much of a choice in a place like this where it’s a long way to anywhere from home. I grew up walking distance from the E and F train in Queens, so I remember how convenient it was. I think I forgot how awful the trains smelled.
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I found I could download music off VIDs on YOUTUBE and convert them to MP3s. So I have a USB stick n my car with about 800 songs on it from the Golden Age of music – The 70s!!!! Never get tired of it .
I have defeated the drag of commuting. You’re just lucky you don’t have to endure my singing!
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Now THAT was what was great about driving alone. You could sing your heart out and feel like a great performer, out of key and everything 🙂
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I never had to make the horrible long commutes you did, but everything else? EXACTLY! I cannot even fathom having to drive so far to a job, but I suppose one adapts. I miss the money too though. But absolutely nothing else about it at all. Plus these days (IMO) the drivers ‘out there’ are a LOT more nutty and dangerous; that or I’m getting too old to drive any distances at all.
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I simply couldn’t find a job that paid a living wage that didn’t involve a long commute. The commute in and out of Boston was fewer miles, but bumper-to-bumper traffic. At least driving to Connecticut, traffic moved.
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I hate sitting in traffic jams, Marilyn. I also used to listen to audio books while commuting and now I listen to them while I do other things. I don’t miss the driving at all. I find driving tiring because you have to be alert all the time. I must admit, that I like working from home and don’t expect I’ll ever return to an office more than a few times a month.
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Many of my last years were working from home. The problem was that sometimes, I really needed to be physically in the office, especially when I was gathering data from engineers and developers. When I could, I worked from home … but sometimes, it just wasn’t possible.
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Agreed!
Leslie
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Retirement is GREAT. Commuting sorta sucks.
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Driving anywhere is a headache….
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I have always had such a short drive to/from work. But I miss NPR. Steve Inskeep and David Greene were what soothed out of my driveway and onto the road. But that’s it. Very happy to be retired. Steven and David are doing just fine without me.
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A well-earned retirement is what all that work is supposedly about 🙂
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