For many people, commuting falls into a category alongside purgatory, jail time, and colonoscopies. I like to hope these hours we while away in subways, buses, and highways have some greater potential.
When I started a job that includes a five-hour round-trip drive each week, I heard a lot of stunned comments. “What do you do with all that time?”
I point out that a daily commute of only half an hour one way adds up to just as much time. That’s roughly the national average (26 minutes each way), but well under average in cities like New York and Chicago. Take that five hours for forty weeks a year over ten years, and you’ve spent 2,000 hours in transit, nearly twelve solid weeks.
I have to believe that these hours are more than just a disposable mechanism for getting to and from “real” life.
But what do you do with those minutes and hours? How do you take the inconvenient interruption and turn it into meaningful living?
To read my list of suggestions, check out the post I wrote for InterVarsity’s The Well.