It’s a most unexpected discovery: commuting as an organizing
principle of life.
I’ve
been at it for six weeks now. Two hours each way, four hours per day, getting
from home in Hamilton to work in Toronto, and back again. I can still hardly
believe that I agreed to this move, knowing that this commute would be a daily requirement,
controlling factor and drain on my life. I worried over it, but since everything
else about the move appealed to me, I trusted that I could at least tolerate
it, if nothing more. And now I find that commuting has brought a level of order
to my life that’s been lacking for a long time.
It’s
embarrassing to write, even shameful, but structure is something I’ve needed, but
have avoided throughout my adulthood. My nature is to dodge the limitations of
set schedules, time lines and due dates. It’s equal parts stubbornness, a
warped sense of independence, and a tendency toward indulgence that hold sway.
Consequently, I’m always struggling with the management of my life, always
feeling there’s not enough time for all the things that are important to me. And
unexpectedly, commuting has carved out a partial solution to all of this, and I
find myself embracing it.
I’ve
done my share of commuting in the past and it’s always been a burdensome waste
of time. Strap-hanging on buses and trains; jostling through crowds of
strangers; dirty seats, no seats; not having the right change for the fare, and
worst of all, turning a corner to see my bus pulling away - these are all
reasons I’ve hated commuting. Even
drive commuting is painful, however much it may seem an attractive alternative
to strap-hanging. The relative absence of physical discomfort allows for the
full impact of the boredom, the restlessness, the mind-numbing inanity of most
radio, as one sits in slow-moving traffic as life ebbs slowly away.
The main worry I had facing my current commute was having to conform to a
schedule. I’m a late night person, and a late riser. I’m not very fond of
clocks and alarms and, no, I’m not the most punctual person you’ll meet – and
I’ve very much enjoyed the freedom of not having to be. A locked-in schedule
does not appeal to me.
However,
from where I live in Hamilton, there are two direct, express trains to Toronto
every morning, and the latest leaves the station promptly at 6:46. There are
other options, but they all involve even longer commutes. 5:30 feels like an
un-Godly time to arise in the morning (it’s practically the middle of the
night!), but it makes my life work, so I’m making it work.
But how
does one go from a loose waking time, variable according to my next day’s
schedule, how late I was up the night before, and how often I choose to hit my
alarm’s snooze button – to an early commute schedule that has me dropping into
my desk chair at an hour when I was previously lowering my feet to the cold
bedroom floor? With surprising ease, it turns out.
I don’t really like admitting
this truth, but it all seems to come down to having options taken from me. If I
miss a train, it doesn’t cost me just a few minutes, as missing a bus or a
traffic light did previously. It costs me at least half an hour, and that time
is lost from the relaxing, evening end of my day. There is now an economy of
minutes I must take seriously, to keep my life functioning…so I do.
Yet, I can’t get over how easy
it’s been. Nor how much good has come out of it. I’m actually becoming more
productive at work, as my days are more organized and predictable. I’m loving
the feeling of arriving at and leaving the office with the first wave of
colleagues instead of the last – makes me feel that I’m leading rather than
lagging. And the added quiet, and the quality of light and air in the mornings,
it’s all surprisingly refreshing and enlivening. I’m a bit shocked that I
haven’t missed a train yet.
But the
greatest bonus has come in an area I had come to feel some despair about: my
writing. The morning of my first commute, I whipped out my laptop the moment I
was seated, and I wrote for the first forty-five minutes of the seventy-five minute
trip. On the way home, I did the same. In no time at all, it became a habit,
one I find myself positively looking forward to. In fact, one of the most satisfying
moments of my every working day is when I get seated in the near-empty GO train,
at the start of its run. The attendant comes over the speaker and announces the
one to five minutes remaining before departure. The sky is still dark as I take
off my coat, settle myself and turn on the laptop. By the time I tap in the
date at the top of my opening page, the train has begun to move, and its slow,
rocking motion nudges me along. Where will I begin today? With some idea newly
formed in the night? Revising yesterday’s product? Attacking the novel chapter
I’ve been revising for submission to my writing group?
I’m
writing with more regularity and consistency than I have in some years. It’s
been six weeks now. Strange to say, the only days I haven’t gotten in at least
an hour of writing have fallen on the weekends, when, despite all my
intentions, a day can so easily fly by, the period of quiet focus that I
imagined, never having come. I know this is nonsense, delusion…yet?
I’m
grateful. I’m re-energized. I’m optimistic again, that I can address my writing
goals and see myself moving toward them in real time. The discipline of this
commute seems to be spreading to other areas. I’m having a somewhat different
feeling and approach to time, to the minutes and hours of the day, the weeks
and months of the calendar. Never did I imagine that commuting could be so
good.
