Why I Yearn To Work From Home

The plight of the commuter is all to real

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Is there anything more alluring than the thought of working from the comforts of your own home? What could be better? All I want is to work in my pajamas and stop dressing weirdly formally for no reason at all.

But more than anything else, I just want to ditch my commute.

I don’t know about you, but I cannot stand commuting. I commute about 35 minutes to and from work every day. And even worse, I do it in the Chicago suburbs where everyone drives like a freaking savage.

In the suburbs, commuter culture reigns supreme. Even places that feel like they should be nearby are still over ten minutes away, and everyone is apparently fine with that.

Commuting isn’t just a major inconvenience. Commuting isn’t just an incredibly stressful time where you get repeatedly cut off by bros in Jeeps and BMW’s. Commuting isn’t just a time to get trapped behind a semi-truck and someone driving five below the speed limit.

No, commuting isn’t just one of those things. No, commuting is a contagion.

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Commuting is a cancer that spreads throughout the office, and it spreads in the form of people talking about commuting.

Now listen, I am all for camaraderie and developing new friendships, but I have to draw the line at talking about commuting.

Listen to my plea people, this is a PSA. You don’t need to be friends with people just because they work next to you. You can still maintain a civil, amicable working relationship without laboriously fraternizing over every route you’ve ever taken to every job you’ve ever had.

Stop it. If this is all you have to talk about, you are not friends. You are just people who work in the same office, and that is fine. Just go on your phone like you know you want to.

But even as physically painful as conversations about commuting can be to listen to, it’s not like I don’t get why people do it. The desire to express all your commuting thoughts is incredibly easy to understand. Case and point, I am popping off as we speak.

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My commute alone consumes upwards of six hours of my life every week. That is a lot of time.

Commuting can become such an all-consuming activity that it’s almost impossible for me to completely stop thinking about it.

I plan my entire day around it. I have to plan to make time for my side projects, like writing and publishing the words you’re reading right now. The times I wake up and go to bed is determined by my commute. I even have to plan when I can relax, because otherwise, I would just burn myself out.

And as you could imagine, planned relaxation isn’t exactly “chill.”

And I know there is a cure to all these ills. All of this exhaustive planning, all of the exhaustion from being stretched so thin, all of it could be cured by simply ditching that commute.

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This is why I want to work from home.

By not needing to commute or needing to get all dressed up for work, I could save 90 minutes a day! And I know won’t miss a second of it.

All of that nonsense that gets thrown out about commuting being an opportunity to decompress before coming home, or commuting being a great time to turn on an audiobook is complete garbage. I can listen to audiobooks and podcasts on my own time, while doing things I actually enjoy.

If I didn’t commute, I would have more time to watch all the shows people keep pressuring me to watch. I would have the free time to go to the gym, where I can play pickup basketball with too much intensity. I’d have time to play all the video games I never get around to playing.

Basically, I would stop worrying about whether or not I have enough time to do the things I love doing. Specifically, I would stop worrying about whether I would be able to find the time for my passion projects.

And sure, even with this additional time, I know there’s always going to be one more thing that I wish I had time for. But you see, at that point, the thing I’d be missing would be something I don’t care about. I am not concerned about those things won’t giving me serious “FOMO”.

I’d finally have the time to do all the things I really want to do. I would be more comfortable and exist in a better headspace. And, whether it be one of the books I’m working on or a story for Medium, I could focus more and produce better work.

And I could potentially reap all of these benefits while wearing pajamas to work.

That, to me, would be nirvana. That is why I want to work from home.

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