When living in Southern California, commuting by car becomes part of your daily life. There are people who drive to work up to 2 hours one way. I’m fortunate enough to have my workplace really close to my house, but I know that eventually I might end up in a job that requires long-distance commuting.

In the past month or so, I had a taste of this; my work required me to travel in excess of 100 miles several times. Although it didn’t happen every day, it happened often enough to affect me. First of all, it desensitizes you on what happens on the highway. There’s that strange disconnect I feel whenever I drive for a long period of time — I know that I’m driving ~70 mph, and that a wrong move or a car breakdown can result in something horrible; at the very least, a miserable day. Yet the robustness of modern cars and the amount of trust you have on other drivers somehow keeps the traffic going, and allows me to just think about getting from point A to point B without worrying about what happens to the surroundings in between. Sometimes you arrive at these small towns and think, “hmm, I wonder who lives here and what they do” but before you know it, you’ve zoomed past it since you’re trying to get to work/home. At the end of the trip, you feel tired and a bit unproductive because all you did for the past hour or so was driving a car. I imagine if you do this everyday for months, or years, it’s going to take a toll on you.
Eventually, you start thinking about the best ways to use that down time. Some people bring audiobooks (think harry potter on a CD), some bring self-improvement CDs, and some just turn on the radio to listen to talk shows or music. I don’t have anything that I regularly listen to, but ideally I prefer to listen to a CD that actually has something useful in it, like the history of the Prophet Muhammad. Too much music will eventually bore you and kill some brain cells in the process.. unless you’re a musician. Some busy people try to do work while driving, like teleconferencing using a Bluetooth headset. By the way, if any of you would like to share your ideas on how to make commuting time useful, let me know.
Tau