A 30-Minute Commute...

People have often asked me why I live so far away from the places I work, and I've thought about this off and on. In Seattle, my commute was 13 miles and 25-45 minutes depending on traffic (and across a bridge!). In California, I lived 19 miles from work and the commute was 20-30 minutes. In Salt Lake, I live about 20 miles (?) and the commute is usually 25-35 minutes. I realized that I've always lived about 30 minutes away from my place of work, at least for about the last 7 1/2 years -- the entire time I've been a nurse... until now...

Here in Portland, where I'm currently working as a Travel Nurse for the summer, I have an apartment about 5 minutes from the hospital that I work in. Overall it's been great...until I got off work this morning after a LONG, 13 1/2 hour night, and was tired and frustrated, and just needed to blow off a little aggression by driving really fast in my car. Instead of turning into my parking garage, I made a last minute decision and headed to the freeway, where I proceeded to "drive it off" (slowly of course, since I AM in Oregon!) for about 13 miles out, and 13 miles back. It was exactly what I needed, and I laughed as I came to realize that 30 minutes continues to be my perfect commute.

I know it's a waste of gas, and of time, and of a lot of other things, but the benefits are amazing sometimes! It's just enough time to "come down" from a shift, process it, and "put it away" before getting home. It's not long enough to get so tired that I'm falling asleep driving. And it also means that I RARELY run into my patients at the grocery store!

Now if only they had some hard "head-banging" music on the radio on a Sunday morning...