Commute Time

In this week's New Yorker, there's an article about commuting. Did you know that the average commute time in America is 51 minutes? The vast majority of those commuters go by car. According to the article, commuting by car increases social isolation and leads to increased unhappiness (not to mention all the fossil fuels used - google ocean acidification). New Yorkers are supposedly the happiest urban commuters in the U.S.A. - possibly due to our shared sense of community when we're on the train...

I'm so glad I'm in a field where I can pretty much set up anywhere and do business. I plan to live "over the store" as they say - I want my commute to be down a flight of stairs or across a courtyard.

[speaking of courtyards, I've always had the dream of having an interior courtyard. You know, a house with the garden in the middle of it rather than in the front or back. With a packed earth platform for doing martial arts.]

There's a bit in the article about how people trade social goods for material goods. In other words, people trade time with their kids, time with friends, and home cooked meals for bigger houses, more space between them and their neighbors, bigger autos. HOW SAD!

By the way, I am moving to Los Angeles. I've had enough of PCOM. There may be a few more posts but essentially I'm done. Orientation at Yosan is April 27th and I'm going to be there...