is the long commute to work worth it?

Two stints I've commuted in the neighborhood of 60-75 minutes (both times from South Mississippi to New Orleans, once as a college co-op student, the second as Saints beat writer) and it sucks. First time, I usually rode in a vanpool but that didn't help. Second time, I drove a noisy Jeep Wrangler not ideal for commuting. In the end, that 10-plus hours/week was just painful. I live less than 10 minutes from the office now, and I'll always strive for that type of commute.

 

I went from a 20-25 minute walk (or 7-10 minute taxi ride) to an 80 minute commute (drive, NJ Transit, PATH and 12 minute walk). The mornings aren't awful, even though I have to be up by 6, but the nights suck.

 

I'll admit it. I'm an asshole.

 

It must have been you that elbowed me on the subway. Damn you, Big City Woman! Damn you!

 

I have a Jimmy Buffet CD that my son loves. He sometimes accompanies me to work on a weekend morning if I have some work to catch up on. We start with "Pencil Thin Mustache" when we leave the house, skip to "Volcano," and then to "Livingston Saturday Night," which finishes up just as I'm pulling into the parking lot.

10 minutes tops in the summer or on "off" hours; 14 during the school year of if I get caught in "traffic."

I've never had more than a 15-minute commute since I started in this business. But I've never worked in a city larger than 60K, either.

 

It was me. I have no regrets. You looked like you needed a shot to the head, you self-absorbed, money-grubbing, whore to the corporate dollar, Big City Man!

 

Takes me anywhere between five second and two minutes to get to work most days -- depending on the need for a side trip to the bathroom.
But when I have to go into the newspaper, it's anywhere from 18-30 minutes,

 

I was just trying to Blackberry our nanny! Were you the one in the too-tight Ann Taylor suit with the pencil skirt and the bolero-cut jacket? With those cheap platinum hoops and the U2 iPod? Carrying a Crumpler messenger bag with a copy of "Atlas Shrugged" peeking out of the pocket while you sneered into your MAC compact and picked your White-Strips bleached teeth? Was that you, Big City Woman?

Those Pradas you were wearing were knockoffs! Inauthentic wage-slave! Counterfeit striver! Frigid, heartless tease!

 

You remind me of my workaholic husband, in his pinstriped Pierre Cardin suit, overly gelled hair and pristinely polished Furagamo shoes. You bastard. You never have time for the kids. I have to rush home to our three-bedroom penthouse on 45th, pat them on the heads, make sure Cook has dinner on the table and down three or four Cosmopolitans.

 

I prefer the dramatic - if grammatically incorrect - capitalized Big City Woman. It has the representational look and ring of the worst of WPA-era agitprop poetry and playwrighting. Big City Man. Big City Woman. Suckering smalltown, lowercase rubes with golden hearts and big dreams into our hellbound handbasket of louche amorality and easy decadence.

 

I'm just gonna call you Mr. Big from now on, jc.