Surviving a two hour commute.

I’m sitting on the train for a couple of hours this morning, I have a client meeting in Sydney and driving is getting way too expensive. It’s a rare commute for me these days and I’m noticing the differences to when I did this as a daily journey several years ago.
Admittedly have I deliberately set my travel time out of peak hour so I have a seat! And it’s school holidays so I am travelling with a few families.

I’m remembering back to my travel experiences as a regular commuter. I carried a laptop in a backpack with a selection of audio CD’s, headphones and a spare battery pack. Later I would occasionally have DVD’s hired from the video store near my local train station to watch. I would sit crammed in my seat, with my backpack in front of my feet, the laptop across my knees tethered by my headphones.

More often than not I also juggled a job folder from work so I could complete a few extra tasks or work on a freelance project. Very uncomfortable and extremely clumsy.

It was always a struggle balancing everything and quite difficult when the passenger next to me leaped up at the last minute as the train pulled into their stop. I’m sure those who have experienced this routine will understand.

So, comparing that to today’s experience.

Armed with nothing but my trusty BlackBerry. I have so far managed to listen to 20 minutes of my favourite Jazz guitar hero, Joe Pass, checked my FaceBook account, read half a dozen articles on LinkedIn and updated my task list. I have received a number of emails to which I have replied and I’m half way through writing this post.

My headphones are replaced with BlueTooth ear buds, extremely light and you forget you’re wearing them. My backpack is in the cupboard at home and a spare battery for my phone is in my pocket.

I don’t have movies on the phone but if I wanted I could have brought my iPod. I have a number of movies burned with iTunes and while the screen doesn’t compare to a 17 inch laptop its perfectly adequate for personal entertainment. That would of course require me to carry another gadget with me, but like the phone it hangs off my belt so it’s not a big inconvenience.

I have a number of tasks yet to complete and with almost an hour left of travel time I might have time for another blog post.

Most of the tasks I can complete like this are admittedly administrative but they’re done now and when I get back to the office I can focus on my production jobs.

I could publish this post straight to my blog but I like to leave new posts for a few hours and re-read them first, just to make sure I don’t say something stupid.

Tags: BlackBerry, Blogging