I’ve had some different commutes over the years.
The worst was probably from North Vancouver to UBC during the year they were resurfacing the Lion’s Gate Bridge. The traffic snarls were awful. Getting to UBC from home wasn’t all that bad; I lived close to the bridge, like really close, so no matter how long the line was I always managed to get in near the front as someone was always willing to give way. On the way home from UBC….an entirely different story. Traffic was gridlock through downtown and could take up to an hour and a half or more some days. I’d get home stressed, hungry, desperate to pee, and just completely frazzled.
The longest was from home to Malaspina University College (now Vancouver Island University), where I taught for a couple of years. Three days a week on the ferry usually. Those were early mornings and long days. The upside was that I usually managed to get all my preparation and marking done on the ferry so I didn’t usually have to work at night once I got home.
I was self employed for a number of years, so those days I worked from home mostly, except when I had to do site visits and would be away from home and on the road for a week at a time. So working from home wasn’t a new thing.
Since 2011 I have largely worked in a high-rise office building downtown, punctuated by field work that took me out of the office usually a day a week, or most of the weeks between mid-September and mid-November. The field days made the office days more bearable. Four or five years ago I started to work at a hatchery close to my home a couple of days a week; the impetus was a change in the office layout….a switch to what they called Workplace 2.0…what a few others referred to as moving us into veal-fattening pens. More people, less space, more distraction, less productivity. The hatchery offered me a refuge of peace and quiet (punctuated by the odd and unexpected systems alarm), but it was a place where could go to think.
When COVID hit, much of the world went home to work, or at least that component of the world that was able to do so. For many months, my commute became from the upstairs to the downstairs….the bird making every effort to destroy my sanity. Kirk had the upstairs office, I put a desk near the dining room. Eventually Kirk changed jobs and started working out of the house, so I moved into the upstairs office. As the COVID numbers started to drop and vaccinations began to go into arms, the hatchery seemed do-able again.
Recent studies seem to suggest that a vast majority of Canadians who moved into home offices have realized that they appreciate the lack of a commute and the flexibility of working from home. I have to say that I agree and, although I am working from a facility two or more days a week…the fact that my commute can take me down a forest path like that below…well…that’s not too tough to swallow. This morning the only traffic consisted of a pair of young fishermen, and a dog walker. Other than that it was just me and the birds.
My two different commutes are depicted below……neither is too terrible 🙂
The only thing I do miss about the office downtown is the social aspect, the organic conversations that happened and the brainstorming that it could bring with it. Working around others has high value, when you are all working towards a common goal and not working at odds. It will be interesting to see what shape the future is when all of this is behind us.
Monday’s commute to the home office 
Tuesday’s commute to the hatchery office
