To and from work, are you

wide-eyed and bushy-tailed

… or in a trance-like state?

DOES IT MATTER? Well, does your job attitude matter? Your family attitude? What goes on with you in that little Twilight Zone commuting-to-and-fro time window? Are you looking and acting like you just stepped out of (or into) some weird, skin-crawling Steven King story? How does your daily commute impact your business? Career? Family?

Or, hey, maybe you’re hop-skip-jumping along in time to your happy whistling? (Hmmm, hard to remember the last time I heard someone whistle. Once it was commonplace, but now suggests serial-killer symptoms.) Or, no, I was, well, I was  going to substitute “humming” but that’s come to signal readiness for being committed, y’think?

I’m asking all these questions because I have been, alternatively: a tiger, a puppy-dog, and a zombie commuting to, from, and through a wide variety of career pursuits.

I’ve run the proverbial gamut of commuter vehicle experiences from choppers to car pools, and here’s some of what I found . . .

Years of Fortune 500 corporate client travels and commuter trains so jam-packed and smoke-filled, I often gave up a seat to stand, freezing, between the deafening, open-air train car connection spaces (an hour each way on those rare occasions when schedules were actually met), hanging on for dear life. And I won’t even mention the rain.

Ah, yes, and there was always at least one time when briefcase snaps failed or a coffee lid wasn’t secured!

Those enlightening death-defying train rides definitely fed appreciation like no other for the plastic suburbs and phony weekend-warrior neighbors.

I mean imagine racing home from the railroad station to screaming kids, barking dogs, complaints about dinner being cold and a mountain of bills. 

But, alas, those late arrival, go-getter young executives –after working long past punch-out time, in efforts to excel and earn more– often found that state of pandemonium a welcome greeting!

                                                       

In fact, it was almost a treat compared to straddling the clanking, jerking, bucklings that connected the stinking (slippery when wet) rail-cars after a stressful workday.

Then there were years of driving (and standing still on “expressways”) and tolls, bridges, bus fumes, and broken windshield wipers. I wonder how many hours wasted away waiting in lines and at traffic lights and in (cough!cough!cough!) claustrophobic tunnels. No, never mind, I really don’t want to know. It would make me crazier than I am.

So, take a taxi! Yeah, right! Talk about crazy. Besides that drivers must have to pass a taxi test that proves they can’t speak English, they all have their little trade secrets about longer routes to take passengers who are in a hurry, more dangerous routes to take passengers who look nervous, etc. Taxi? No thanks! 

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Besides, I ditched all that nonsense years ago when I took the big leap off of payrolls and benefit plans and came crashing to Earth as (Ta-ta-ta-ta-tah-tah!) . . . poorer than a ragged beggar, more headstrong than the bull in front of the Stock Exchange, able to leap onto prospective clients in a single bound . . . Look! . . . Up in the air! . . . It’s . . . It’s a corporate mogul . . . it’s a pocket-padding politician . . . NO! IT’S ENTREPRENEURMAN!

Yup, that’s me! Shucks! You’d never recognize that frazzled commuter anymore. Now I just run up and down the stairs to my basement office, bathrobe aflutter, with an armful of pantry snacks, writing fool that I am, remembering the good old commuter days, and being soooo thankful to be struggling in small business with big happiness!

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0116

 “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]

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