This summer, I'm living in Pleasanton and working in San Francisco, a choice that comes with a pretty long commute. 2 miles from my house to the BART station, 50 minutes on the BART, then another mile from the Civic Center BART station to the office. To make the non-BART legs of the trip more bearable, I got a Boosted Mini X electric skateboard. Maxing out at 20mph, it brings each of those 2 portions of the commute down to about 10-15 minutes. Factoring in the Boosted, along with BART's unreliability, my average door-to-door commute time ends up being more or less 80 minutes.
In contrast, my commute to work over the summer—when I was both living and working in San Francisco—was about 25 minutes on the MUNI (bus + light-rail). So you can imagine that when my time spent on the road suddenly increased by over threefold, I was understandably jaded. But within a few days, I realized how clear of a silver lining this cloud of a circumstance had.
I consider myself a highly introverted person. That word conjures up in our cultural psyche a range of images, some accurate, some unfairly stereotypical. In reality, all this means is that I'm most comfortable when I'm alone and in my head, thinking, pondering, and quietly making sense of the world around me. I still love meeting and being around people, but it draws pretty heavily from my pool of available energy, which is why I almost exclusively prefer environments where deep and engaging conversation is possible (in other words, one thing I won't miss about college is the frequency of parties where the music drowns out any hope of hearing the person you're talking to 2 feet away).
As an introvert, I try to carve out time in my life for things like reading, journaling, writing. Unfortunately, unwavering discipline isn't one of the defining characteristics of introversion. In the chaos of day-to-day life, with distractions at every turn, the amount of time I actually make for those activities falls far short of what I'd ideally like. My "Want to Read" list grows daily but only gets shortened once every few months. I pine to start writing—and perhaps blogging—regularly so I can develop my thoughts more fully but instead I only write when the anxiety and guilt from not doing so finally boils over.
This needs to change. I want the way I spend my time to be more in accordance with what I tell myself matters to me.
Coming back to my 80-minute commute (160 minutes round-trip), it fulfills exactly that unmet need. The BART legs of the trip provide me with 100 minutes per day of time to fill. There aren't a lot of options on what to do, which is why reading and writing fit right in.
The remaining 60 minutes are either a blast (zooming through the streets on my electric skateboard) or a bore (waiting for the unreliable/late BART train to show up) but it's small enough of a time sink that I can look past it.
So I've decided to take a positive outlook on this 80-minute commute. Rather than being a period of time to suffer through, it's a golden window of opportunity to be my most authentic self and do the things that matter to me most. My plan for now is to spend each morning BART ride writing and each evening BART ride reading. Already, in just 3 short weeks, I've progressed through 2 books and have written more than I have in many months prior.
Here's to hopefully seeing more posts like this in the weeks and months to come.