This weekend I headed to Baltimore to give a talk at a women’s event about getting more young women engaged in community change. Great time with wonderful women and I’m glad I could do it.

But driving over, I feel like I forgot how far away Baltimore is. At one point I said out loud, “I cant believe I’m still in this car.”

I actually really like Baltimore. I used to work there and really the reason I fell out of love with the city is because while I worked in Baltimore, I never actually lived in Baltimore. I was an extreme commuter. And as a result of wasting a vast share of my early twenties on the Beltway for a job I loved, I am now the complete opposite. Now I would very rarely cross the Potomac if it weren’t for my family in Northern Virginia and a sister in Maryland. My new dream is to completely get rid of my car and rely entirely on walking and a Zipcar membership.

Making the drive back and forth in one day wiped me out and got me wondering just how in the hell do I make that drive many, many times each week? And more importantly, what made me think that this was an appropriate way to start my working life?

When friends ask me for advice about making crazy commutes for wonderful jobs my advice is always this: Don’t do it. For three weeks, it will be fine. And then, somewhere on the Beltway slowly creeping home in a torrential downpour, you will feel like death. And no, I am not being dramatic. You’ll see your friends less and a bad commute will put you in a bad mood and that mood will slowly seep into your non-work life. You’ll eat crappy food and gain weight. And things like the great job that made the drive worthwhile, will slowly sour since who can be a high-performer after battling traffic for over an hour straight? I was lucky, technology is borderless and I wasn’t required to work from the office everyday but no matter how you slice it, the costs outweigh the benefits.

Really, between a dying social life and a family you never see because you’re always driving or decompressing from a drive, the main thing extreme commuting murders is community. And we all need community to succeed and thrive in both work and life. If work or travel slowly erodes away moments of your life when you can come together with people you care about to learn, grow and just be then what the hell are we working for?

Yesterday, getting crepes at my old lunch place and I thought if I had to do it all over again, I would just move to Baltimore. Bloom where you’re planted, style.

Because the one thing I missed the most from Baltimore (besides the crepes, go, it’s divine) was the fact that my office was above the Charles Theatre, a great independent movie theater. At the end of the day, I’d walk to my car and realize my hair, clothes, everything smelled like movie theater popcorn. I had no friends in the city to laugh over this small, random, fun fact. And by the time I would get home, the fun popcorn smell was gone, my mood was sour and I was exhausted only ready to climb into bed and do it all over again tomorrow.

Now my office is a short ten minutes away (about to be shorter! we’re moving!). The other day I was leaving the office to meet friends and I saw three guys walking down the street in traffic juggling with a fourth guy following along carrying a boom box blaring fun 80s music. I stopped and watched both impressed and braced for disaster on 14th street. Nothing happened and when I found my friends I still had this amused smile on my face.

Life is just too short to not have community to share the fun and random.

And speaking of random, I’m glad this post gave me the chance to share the video of my friend Karl dancing to work. All part of the Crazy Sustainable Commute movement.

(Photo Credit)