The commute I didn’t know I needed
I have the Goldilocks of commutes. Not too short, not too long, it feels just right.
Commuting can often feel like a chore to be endured. I've had those commutes. Squeezing onto packed tube trains, music loud, trying to zone out the noise and the people. You learn exactly where to stand to be lined up perfectly with the exit and develop the best tactics for getting a seat.
Working as a freelance consultant means you change your commute frequently. Often I don't commute at all, like today, when I've only left the house to take our daughter to school.
I'm currently working in Chelmsford 2-3 days a week. My commute consists of a 7-8 minute walk to Tottenham Hale where I jump on a mainline train to Stratford for 10 minutes, arriving on platform 11. I then cross the platform to 10a and jump on an almost empty train for a 25 minutes ride to Chelmsford. It is then a short walk to the office.
Is this super dull train content? Maybe. (I once took trains from London to Hong Kong so clearly love a train!) There is just something super satisfying about hopping off one train and jumping another train one minute later. A little victory to start every day.
The 25 minute journey to Chelmsford is a lovely amount of time. It is long enough to read some of my book or listen to a podcast and gaze out the window while I drink a coffee but not enough time to try and do work. Once you get out of London there are lots of fields and trees and from next week I'll be watching the sun rise each morning.
This time sets me up for the day, supporting the transition from home to work. When I arrive I feel ready to go in a way I often don't when I go upstairs to our spare room.
It's a slightly adjacent point but I remember talking to the social work practice educators during the pandemic about the impact of a lack of travel between visits. There were concerns that social workers had lost some precious time to decompress and prepare, impacting their wellbeing. (There was an article about this at the time but I haven't found it.)
To a lesser extent, I felt some of that when I used to have back to back Teams calls and jumped from one meeting to another without changing the physical space I was in. It was exhausting. We all need time to process and transition between the different parts of our work and the different parts of our lives.
My ideal commute would be on a bike but this has a very different energy from riding on a train. It's a more switched on, attentive energy. But I'm not in that place at the moment. Right now, the quiet time I get when I commute feels just right.
