For about 6 years I lived next door to P'unk Avenue. A few weeks ago, I moved to
Collingswood, NJ. It is fresh enough that my daughter still refers to the place I work as "next door."
This move has inspired me to think about the proximity of home to work.
I structured a lot of my life around not having a long commute to work. My father was a short-commute role model to me. He would often come home for lunch since he worked about 3 local-road miles from our house, and he rarely was late for dinner at around 5pm.
We all probably know a person that commutes three or more hours to work. We know about how people can spend years of their lives commuting, and we know it can have impact on family, community, the environment and finances. Most people acknowledge the negatives of living a long distance from work, but what is too close? Is there a sweet-spot commute?
It is much too early in my personal exploration of this issue to have any authority in my conclusion, but my early findings lead me to believe that a short commute can be a good thing. By short, I mean about 15 minutes to a half an hour. That is the time it takes me to traverse the 7.9 door-to-door miles between where I live and work. It gives me time to decompress, listen to a podcast or some music, and get ready for my responsibilities as a father.
The view out of my window when I am home is not the same view at work. For some reason, I think this helps me clear my mind of work-related issues and to really relax at home. This separation has improved my state of mind, and I feel more focussed and refreshed in both locations.
I report this with a couple of caveats. Collingswood is the equivalent of a
streetcar suburb that is serviced by the
PATCO high speedline (light rail) 24 hours a day. This makes the commute easy, guilt-free and it lets me get my money's worth out of the iPod part of my iPhone.
Another caveat is that I suspect that this appreciation for a short commute is related to my stage in life as a father of young children. I know that seems counter-intuitive, since when I worked closer to home (next door) I could be home much faster and spend more time with them. Also, I could pop in and see them throughout the day, if I wanted. This was certainly an advantage when they were newborns and up to the time they started attending school, but over time I started to see the return on that decreasing and I felt like the time with them outside of work hours was impacted by my lack of ability to distance myself mentally from work.
Probably the biggest and most ironic part of this story is that many of the choices I made in my life revolved around getting to a place where the work I did for a living was all encompassing and interesting to me. The kind of work you do even if you are not paid to do it. The kind of work you love. Like when I used to design zines with friends, play in a band or edit films in graduate school. Hours would go by without me remembering to eat.
I am fortunate enough to be in that place now. The work I do is satisfying, it fully captures my attention and I love it. I have trouble turning it off, but as a father, I want to turn it off.
In 2008, I identified three priorities: family, my work at P'unk Avenue and my health. When I made that determination, I had no idea that a few months later I would also determine that the best way to honor each of those priorities would be to physically separate two of them. Life is certainly an interesting journey.
