One mid-sized boulder in the avalanche of change that's buried my old life is the daily commute.
I didn't think it would be that big a deal.
I've traveled between town and the coast my whole life. When I was a kid, the coast wasn't much more than a cluster of houses with one gas station & attendant mini mart, a tiny pier overlooking the mud flats, a bakery and a grocery store the size of an average supermarket produce aisle. If you wanted anything or wanted to do anything you drove to town.
The last few years we've been driving out to the coast several times a week, visiting the sizable expatriate community driven off by the financial tyranny of a university town with perfect weather.
But there's a difference between a voluntary, free form schedule and needing to open the store by 10am. It's not a long drive and I enjoy my job, and so lacks the hair splitting blade of existential despair I imagine hovering over many of my fellow travelers.
Still, it puts me in a strange space, one I'm not sure how to utilize.
It occurred, watching the telephone poles go by this morning. that driving to work is the only time most people are alone with their thoughts.
Maybe this explains the attraction cell phones have for drivers.
The unexamined life may not be worth living, but that doesn't divert the national stampede toward ever more cunningly packaged diversions.
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