For the past three years, I've been unbelievably spoiled. In grad school, I had a 20 minute commute to work . . . by foot. My last two jobs (Minnesota and Maine) were even shorter commutes. In fact, in Maine, I lived where I taught and thus had perhaps the easiest "commute" ever.
Now, though. Oh, now. I have a long commute, and I think it might be slowly killing me. I know that plenty of people do longer commutes and have been doing them for years. Right now, my commute is 45 minutes to an hour, depending on traffic and exactly when I leave my house. An hour is the outer limit, typically speaking, and that's what I had today. For some reason, the Minnesotans didn't like the rain this morning and showed it by gridlocking my commute a full 10 miles before I typically encounter stop and go.
For years, I've talked about the importance of a short commute even though I didn't have much experience with the long commute. If I wasn't convinced before, I am now. Short commutes save gas, save time, and are overall more enjoyable. I have 3.5 more months left of my current job and my long commute, and then I have to decide what to do next job-wise and living wise.
Now, here's the question that lies ahead for me: what is most important? What are more priorities? And what are my options? Matt is at his job for the next several years. Is it better for me to have a job I enjoy or a commute that doesn't wear on my soul?
Of course, this is also a roundabout way of explaining why I haven't posted much recently. Sometimes, I'm energized after work. I really do like what I'm doing. But most of the time I'm really, really tired. Being away from home for 11 hours is a lot of time.
My main goal right now is to save up money from my steady paycheck and chart a course for my future direction. And I promise to stop by from time to time.