Nasty day. Not snowing yet, but that rain is near ice. The bus is late, difficult to gauge by how much, they come when they feel like it, sometimes two arriving together, and then nothing for days. My feet start to get cold. A bus passes, too full to pick us up. This is the daily attempt to commute to work. Repeat the scenario on the way home, the wait so long, I could catch the next bus back to work.
Nothing can accelerate work place burn out faster than a lousy commute. Perhaps the commute started the burn out in the first place.
Forget the advice to spice things up by going a different route. I take the shortest, and only route available. If there was another way, it would be infinitely longer – why would I want to do that? Get up earlier and come home later? Na. And in the winter it is dark a.m. and p.m., not much change of scenery there. Finding another route is as bad advice as standing on a bus without holding onto anything to improve your balance (yes this piece of wisdom is on the internet). Advice doled out by people who never take the bus. Ever.
It’s not the scenery that dulls the mind. It is the waiting. Looking hopefully down empty roads and seeing no vehicles, of any kind, in sight. Just blowing snow. Or sheets of rain. Or a nice sunset on the good days.
Once on a bus, packed in like sardines, our bulk is smashed to one side as bus takes corners on two wheels, and folded up like an accordion on sudden stops and starts. And it stops at every. single. stop. We get every. single. red light.
Eight a.m. The driver sings at the top of his lungs all the way to work, in two languages. A lot of tremolo, but not gravel down a tin chute, thank goodness. But at 8 a.m.?
Move closer to work? Are you kidding me?! The repercussions of that should be evident.
But busing beats walking. Walk? I had to during bus strikes. In January. It took an hour and a half one way. And I had it easy. Some people had to walk hours and still put in a full day. I near froze, got buried in a snow bank by a snow plow and generally believed my life would soon end. Bicycle? Dangerous. But brave souls do it. Koodoos to them for sure. Plus they save a huge amount of money and get in shape. Winter must be a blast to bicycle in. I used to in the summer, but bike thefts are common. So nice at the end of the day to find your only ride home is gone or worse, mangled. No room in current office for safe stow away of bike. I know, I have an excuse for everything.
Of course everyone has their own horror stories of taking the bus. I could curl your hair with some of mine.
I am, of course, ranting.
I figured it out. I have gone down the same road almost 6000 times during the past twelve years.
If I get to retire when I want, it means maybe only a thousand more trips.
I won’t miss it.