Notes from the Commute

Good morning, fellow commuters.

Every morning I wake up to two alarms. One to get me out of bed and another to remind to stumble out the door and go to the train station, where I will await the train to Aachen.

And so the hurrying up and waiting begins. Sprint out of bed, linger over the breakfast, rush to the platform, wait for the train. Then the trip, which is actually a long wait for the train's arrival to Aachen.

In the afternoon, or Feierabend, as they call them here, I leave the office for the train station,  sometimes sprinting to a bus stop, to wait, then sprinting into the train station, to wait for a train, any train that will take me back to the Dorf. Once at home in the Dorf there is leisure time before the nightly routine of packing my bag and laying out my clothes to ease the limited decision-making-power of groggy-6am-straggery-sleepy Marshall.

Hurry up and wait. And wait. Those activities eat up a lot of time, which has become a precious commodity.

This blog has always been a passion project living in the margins of my day. Its posts begin as snippets scribbled into notebooks on a lunchtime Discovery Walk, then typed during the work day's final minutes before I leave the office.

But in the flurry of daily sprinting and waiting – with the pressure to catch the bus that will take me to the place where I will catch the train, with my time structured around arrivals, departures, and delays – those margins of my day are pushed back.

I'm not whining. I have a good, challenging job. I work with thoughtful, competent  people in a niche, but interesting corner of the tech industry. I even get to work from home, since my new employer treats its employees like responsible adults who can get work done without supervision.

This commuting lifestyle has only taught me the value of time. Sure, I have time to doodle in my notebook or read a book or look out the window and ponder things… like this blog post…

But when you have structure enforced on you it's difficult to find time to waste, like 45 minutes to write a blog post that's not working and then throw it out. (That might be a subtle mea culpa if you don't like this post.)

There's little time for Discovery Walks or quick drinks at the bar with colleagues, because there's a schedule to keep and a train board and things to do before I go to bed, like pack a lunch and search for clean clothes for the next day.

And yet, when I get those moments, to ride a bike during a lunch break on a home office day or just sit on the balcony, I appreciate those moments more because of their rarity.

I'm not complaining, seriously, because there's a lot to be happy with. Let us end it on a brighter note, with a promise to you, dear blog reader, that I will try to keep up with the blog. The daily slog is long, but it isn't so dreary. There's plenty to write about and plenty to show. I just have to stop taking pictures out of train windows and get on with telling you about it all.