Not my favorite day ever
The day started on the wrong foot—I woke up too early, decided to get up and get some magazine reading done, but instead apparently spent an hour and a half dozing and trying to get up, 'cause by the time I was on my feet, it was time to go to work.
And then at work I found out that within a month or two, I'll be working in San Francisco instead of Redwood Shores. (Others had bigger changes, but I'm only gonna complain here about the part that directly affects me.) I realize that many of you will have absolutely no sympathy for me; I realize that I've been spoiled by having short commutes for the past ten years, and that lots of people have very long commutes. Nonetheless, I'm very unhappy about this change.
It takes me roughly 20 minutes to drive to the Redwood Shores office each day, in the absence of traffic. When I first took the job, I wasn't entirely happy about even that much commute, having spent most of the previous five years living within a 10-minute drive of work. But I've gotten resigned to it over the years.
My new commute would be roughly 50 minutes without traffic (and there's almost always traffic) if I were willing to drive. But I hate driving in or near San Francisco (or cities in general, really), and parking near the SF office is expensive when it exists at all. (Add at least ten minutes to the morning commute for finding parking.) And I don't like the idea of spending an hour and a half a day driving; I can't do anything else while I'm driving. I could listen to books-on-tape, but I don't really have much interest in that. Radio and music are fine, but not something I want to spend 90 minutes a day on. And then there's the pollution (though my car gets extremely good gas mileage).
My other option is to take CalTrain. There's a station 20 minutes from my house by bike, and another (that has a car parking lot) that's a 15-minute drive from my house. The train takes about an hour and a quarter to get to the end of the line in San Francisco, and then it's a 20-minute walk to the office.
Certainly 40 minutes of walking each day will be good for me; I don't get enough exercise. And certainly I'll often be able to use the time on the train to read, write, or sleep.
But I really hate the notion of having to spend two hours to get to work, and of spending four hours a day in transit. Not to mention having to leave the house an hour and 40 minutes earlier in order to get to work at the same time.
Which may end up meaning that I'll bite the bullet and drive, I dunno. Either way, I'm losing a minimum of an hour a day of productive time, and I already don't have enough time to do everything I want to do in a day.
I'm hoping I can work at home more—I've been working at home one day a week, and I'm hoping I can increase that to two or even three. Haven't had a chance to find out yet. We'll see.
One other small disgruntlement about all this: I've just finally gotten into the habit of hanging out at Pam &Arthur's place one night a week, seeing them and the kidlet. That's been feasible 'cause they live very close to where I work, so I can stop by after work. I suppose I could drive up to Redwood City one day a week and take the train from there, then go to their place on the way home. But it would mean getting to their place around 9 p.m. instead of around 7.
Oy—I just realized this is going to play havoc with my eating schedule. I usually leave work at 7ish p.m. (because traffic is too heavy to be worth dealing with before then), which gets me home in time to eat before 8ish most of the time. But leaving the SF office at 7 gets me home around 9, by which time I'll be starving. Which means I'll need to eat in the city most nights (or else shift to an earlier work schedule in addition to leaving for work much earlier, but I don't think I can deal with leaving for work two and a half hours earlier than I do now). Too expensive to eat out most nights, so I'll have to start bringing dinner to work. Or something. Ugh.
Did I mention I'm very unhappy about this?
