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Long Way Home

Long Way Home

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The Building Museum on a warm, sunny day.

When the day is long, the air is cold, and the bag is heavy (last night’s contents: piles of work, a newspaper, magazine, shoes and gym clothes) the Judiciary Square Metro stop is the natural choice. It’s five minutes away from the office.

But last night I pushed on to Metro Center. It’s a mile or so down the road: Down E Street to Ninth Street to F Street to Thirteenth and almost to G. I walk past the Building Museum and the National Portrait Gallery, through Chinatown and Penn Quarter, get almost as far as the White House before I head down to the train.

I catch snatches of conversation (“Well, there’s that Italian place down the street…”),  spot the remnants of a farmer’s market, see scores of tourists milling around the Spy Museum.

My bag is heavy, I think of the errands I have to run before I get home. But I’m glad I chose this route. I was tired when I started. But I’m not anymore.

Ten Years

Ten Years

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Every so often I receive a message from LinkedIn reminding me to congratulate a contact on a work anniversary. Silly stuff, for the most part. But there is one work anniversary I celebrate every year. And I don’t need LinkedIn to remind me.

Ten years ago today I went back to work in an office again. I had been a full-time freelancer for many years by then and —truth be told — wasn’t sure that being a staff writer-editor would “take.” It’s not that the work wasn’t interesting; it was giving up the freedom of the freelance life and swallowing the three-hour round-trip commute.

But I did swallow it, and through the years have earned back a bit of flexibility. It’s a routine and a rhythm I’ve gotten used to. But it’s not the work that matters. What matters is the writing I do when I’m not working. Which, in a way, renders the anniversary moot. But I celebrate it still. It was a milestone.

Payday

Payday

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It struck me yesterday as I was walking that it was the last day of the month — payday.

Like many people, I’m paid electronically. The money enters our account without a sound. No envelope opening, no bank teller tabulating. A silent acquisition.

This is a wonderful convenience and not something I want to change. But it means I seldom celebrate the wage-earning aspect of my work, the fact that every month a comfortable sum is exchanged for my toil.

So today I’m celebrating — with a silent cheer.

Six Twenty-Eight

Six Twenty-Eight

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I’m learning a little more about Metro’s new Silver Line every day: where to stand on the platform so  I can transfer easily downtown; how to negotiate the confusing, multi-level garage; and, this morning, how to avoid the garage entirely.

There’s a free parking lot near the Reston Wiehle station, actually a series of parking lots. I’ve known about them for years — they were originally intended as park-and-ride lots for bus riders — but it suddenly dawned on me that they’re just a couple blocks from the new Metro station. Maybe they’re not open anymore, maybe they’re reserved — or maybe they’re a way to save $4.85! 

Today was the day to find out, so I left the house a little after 6, pulled up to the lots about 6:20 and found … pandemonium. Cars pulling in, cars circling, cars like vultures searching for carrion. I tried one section of the lot and found it completely full, then headed back the way I had come in to explore the other side. It looked tight. Most spots were taken but there, off to my left, wasn’t that an opening? Yes! It was! I pulled in quickly before someone beat me to it.

As I was walking to the station I fell in step with a fellow commuter who told me that this lot “always fills up by 6:28. Those cars there are the last ones that will find spots.”

Why 6:28 and not 6:29 or 6:31 I never learned, but the man seemed quite sure of himself. A full lot by 6:28 a.m.? Why not?

Residual Delays

Residual Delays

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This was one of those mornings on Metro. Not the worst, certainly not the worst. But a lurching, stop-start, running-late kind of morning.

Often when this happens the explanation is “we are experiencing residual delays due to an earlier incident.” So I’ve been swirling that phrase around in my mind this morning. Residual delays. Residual. Delays.

In this case residual means what is left after the larger part is gone, of course, but there is another definition of residual, one used in the entertainment industry — payments for past achievements.

What are the residuals of riding Metro? It’s greener and healthier — I drive less and walk more — those two come immediately to mind.

But aren’t there delayed residuals, too? Metro gives me time to write and read and think. A friend of mine, a poet, has completed a book’s worth of verse in her last few years on the Red Line. I write in my journal, rough out essay ideas, edit articles.

Though it often tries my spirit, there is no doubt that Metro nurtures my mind. Not shabby for a delayed residual.

Midday Rush

Midday Rush

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It’s what I’m in today, this moment. Despite best intentions, the silent prayer before rising, the attempts at perspective. Some days, even gorgeous ones like today, even early in the week, are stretched before they begin.

I knew my day was headed for this when I couldn’t open my office door because of all the page proofs stuck beneath it. Knew it when I saw the lines I’d have to cut from several pages. (Strange and old school to be saying this in digital space, where lines don’t much matter — though characters do.)

Just barely time now to lift my head, make the list, complete each task as carefully and methodically as I can, then move on.

Deadlines

Deadlines

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My business has a lot of them. I’m under pressure from one right now. Enough so that I postponed  this post until I spent a couple hours on an article I’m writing.

Deadlines are funny things, often self-induced. But once set they are hard to ignore.

They are the impetus and the framework. The hammer on the anvil. The doer of the action. They are the outside force that propels the inward adjustment.

Segments

Segments

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Walking home from the Silver Line yesterday and driving to the Orange Line this morning, I noticed the journeys have something in common.

Like any trip, they are not just one long sweep of motion; they are segments cobbled together by time and movement.

I hadn’t driven to the Vienna Metro (Orange Line’s last stop) for almost four weeks, so I saw it with fresh eyes: the Fox Mill Road segment, up one hill and down another; the Vale portion, before the big turn and after it; the straightaway that is Hunter Mill Road; the short stretch of Chain Bridge; the newly repaved and bicycle-laned Old Courthouse, then the turn onto Sutton, Country Creek and right then left into the parking garage.

Walking gave me these eyes, let me see the drive in segments as I would a stroll. I’m grateful for that.

Commuting on Foot

Commuting on Foot

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Yesterday I walked once again from the Wiehle Metro station to my car in a parking lot four miles away. Why is this worth mentioning? Only for this — that I am, finally, commuting on foot in the suburbs.

This is not an accomplishment to be shrugged off. And I don’t mean it’s my own personal accomplishment but an evolution in the way we live. That I can step off the train and travel on my own steam to the next destination is a marvel, given the way I started living here 25 years ago.

Then I couldn’t leave the neighborhood on foot because of cars barreling down narrow, un-shouldered roads. Now sidewalks and bike lanes take me to the grocery store and pharmacy; let me tap into Reston’s trail system, which used to be a tantalizing but unreachable distance away.

So to all forms of walking I celebrate here  — ambling meditatively through the woods, running pell-mell through the meadow, strolling briskly through the city — let me add the walk which is not a destination in itself but which has a larger purpose. It not only takes me out of myself; it takes me home.

The Return: Some Perspective

The Return: Some Perspective

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A rainy-day return to the office. Low light, lowered expectations; today’s goal to survive. Grateful for a certain rainy-day coziness and the quiet required to work hard and long to meet deadlines.

Just coincidentally, I was reading a passage from  Shirley Hazzard’s Transit of Venus as I disembarked in D.C. “Girls were getting up all over London. In striped pyjamas, in flowered Viyella nightgowns, in cotton shifts they had made themselves and unevenly hemmed … They were putting the shilling in the meter and the kettle on the gas ring. … “

Ah, I’m feeling better already. I have a store-bought cotton nightgown. I have an electric tea kettle. I pay for gas by the month not the morning.

Hazzard continues: “It is hard to say what they had least of—past, present or future. It is hard to say how or why they stood it, the cold room, the wet walk to the bus, the office in which they had no prospects and no fun.”

Oh dear. Have I ever thought like this? Of course. Poor me, back from a lovely vacation to my comfortable office! Poor me, paid to write and edit!

Hazzard has put it in perspective: It could be worse, and it has been.

“Poor me” better get busy.