Do you ever feel like a pendulum? Lately commuting has often occupied 2.5 to 3 hours of my day. The German expression for this is “Pendeln” (related to “pendulum”). I love that bittersweet mental image: workers swinging between home and work in a slow, steady rhythm. Repetitive oscillation. Before you know it, you’ve woken up in a different month.

I find it interesting how different regions perceive time. You also don’t need to leave a country to find diverse perspectives within it. As my family likes to say, it felt like you could go nearly anywhere in 15 minutes living in the Halifax area. When we lived 30 minutes from the city, it was perceived as much too far – it was a big deal to visit someone so distant. (Note that this was a while ago; things may have shifted.)

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Toronto skyscraper. Clouds help it look more imposing than usual

Meanwhile, in the Greater Toronto Area, it sometimes feels like you need an hour to get anywhere. Merely 15 minutes sounds like an amazing commute. The mellow east coast lifestyle is replaced by often-aggressive driving culture or crowded public transit… I admit I overestimated the energy I would have after work. That said, a lot of jobs are located downtown, and nice/affordable housing is often outside the city core – so I don’t intend to complain. It’s just been an adjustment. Sometimes commuting is draining, but sometimes it presents life-giving opportunities for conversation or reading etc. I wouldn’t trade away this time in Ontario with family.

 

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En-route moment of beauty

I’m trying to think of summer at home as its own adventure and chance to explore my surroundings in a new way. Sometimes “travel” looks like sitting in traffic and not getting anywhere fast. If you can relate, stay strong in these moments. You will arrive, and you can do the thing (whatever that is). You never know: perhaps you’ll stumble into an unfamiliar sight and a sense of wonder can be restored to the pendulum’s routine.

 

 

(Editor’s note: Settling into a new work routine is also why I haven’t posted for a while. We’ll see if I can find a good rhythm this summer, but if not, I will definitely pick it up again for the quest to France in the fall.)