Time to Decompress...

I drive a lot. My commute is 75 miles in each direction. And though I only work in the office three days a week, I still spend at least 500 miles on the road each week. Add in the other miscellaneous driving I do, and I'm putting well over 2,000 miles on my car each month.

(For reference, I snapped this picture on January 2nd and I've gone over 3,000 miles since. This means I get a lot of oil changes.)

Typically, I spend about 100 minutes driving into work and 80 going home, since there's less traffic when I leave the office.

That's a lot of driving for anyone, but I have gotten used to the commute. I don't love it, but I can't say that I actually hate it, either. That drive home, spacing out as I maintain a certain cruise control speed in the fast-lane is peaceful alone time—the majority spent listening to the music, NPR, or audiobooks—does wonders for my post-work psyche.

Now, I don't have a stressful job. Sure, some days are busier than others, but it's nothing like a fast-paced, Crackberry, newsroom environments from my past gigs. Heck, even working at the travel agency caused more stress, since I was in charge of everything. Mostly, I do my thing, do it well, and leave it behind at the end of the day.

But for me, I still need that time in the car to decompress from my day. I use it as a transition from "work mode."

What's work mode? Work mode is how I get when I'm on task. It can happen in the office, at my real job, or when I'm banging away at the keyboard at home. As a guy, I can only handle one task at a time. I'll focus on that one thing and ignore everything else. This makes me a delightful conversationalist while I'm in work mode.

"Mmhmm... yeah, whatever."

"Uh, what'd you say?"

"(Dead silence)"

Yeah, I'm not that much fun in work mode.

The problem with work mode is that it takes me some time to work my way out of it. I can't just instantly leave the office and feel my brain turn to back toward my real life. Nope, it requires some coaching, some telling myself not to think about work stuff, and a lot of zen-like emptying of the mind. Not that I'm meditating while I'm driving... More likely, I'm just not thinking of anything.

And that part's great. I'm much more social and relaxed when I get home.

I don't know why I'm telling you all this. I was just thinking about it the other day and I wondered if anyone else has a "work mode?" Or is that purely an annoying Nagel trait?

(Yes, as you can see from my odometer, my Toyota Camry is the definition of a high-mileage car.)

Reading on the Road

Everyone wants to read more. At least, I've never heard of anyone who wants to read less. I think deciding to read more has to be the second most popular New Year's resolution—right after trying to lose weight, joining a gym and making sure I have to wait 10 minutes to get on any machine for the first 21 days of every year.

As you know, I don't really like making New Year's Resolutions, but I always do try to make a conscious effort to read more. Lately (and by "lately," I mean the last three years), I haven't been reading as much as I want. Earning a MFA actually kept me from burying my nose in books. I worked, I went to class, came home, pretended to do work, went to bed and then repeated the process. There wasn't room for much extra-curricular activity there. And when there was, I didn't read anything.

But, lately, I've been doing my best to crank through some books. I'm just finishing the Lord of the Rings trilogy for the first time (spending a lot of time in Mordor). I fell in love with "The Alchemist," Paulo Coelho's classic. In fact, I liked that one so much, I not only learned his name, but I also subscribed to his fantastic blog. I've joined a nerdy reading group, where we're going through Thucydides' and Aristotle's original works and discussing them on a monthly conference call (in between Dungeons and Dragon sessions and smoking pipes).

But most of the "reading" I've done lately has taken place in my car. Those of you that know me, probably aren't that surprised—you know how much emailing/texting/Twittering I do from the highway's fast lane. But I'm not talking about actual reading, I'm talking about audiobooks.

Three days a week, I spend anywhere from 3-4 hours on the road. I have a 75-mile commute, about 20 of which take place in busy, rush-hour traffic. It's a good way for a man to go insane. So I had to find some way to occupy myself and provide distraction from ramming my Camry head-on into some jerk's BMW. So, I visited my local library and started picking up audiobooks.

Being a visual person, I didn't know how I'd do. But it's turned out to be a great success. After just a minute or two, I find myself completely engrossed in listening to the book. I still pay attention to driving, of course, but my brain doesn't really wander otherwise. And it makes those 75 miles just whip by, even when I'm just doing 4.5 miles an hour and drifting leaves are making more progress. Thus far, I've "read" Hemingway's "Old Man and the Sea" (every word counts), David Sedaris' "When You Are Engulfed in Flames" (classic Sedaris, and always funny), Augusten Burrough's "Running with Scissors" (delightfully depressing), and the Ken Burns' audiobook companion for the Mark Twain documentary (surprisingly good). Considering the lengths of the books, I've made pretty good progress over the past two months or so. Right now, I'm halfway through Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice," which has given me an opportunity to get through a book that I probably wouldn't have otherwise read.

So, while this has been a boring blog post for you to read, I did want you to know that I'm enjoying myself. And, perhaps, encourage you to find a way to read a bit more... even if it has to be an inventive way. Just, for the love of all that's good, don't become the girl in front of me at the gym, reading Cosmo while she barely pedals the stationary bike.

Reason #4,239 I'm not ready to have kids...

I love my niece. She's the cutest thing I've ever seen, and I'm not saying that just because she's related to me (not that it hurts, ha).

She's my first niece, is the first grandkid on both sides of the family and is an only child. So, um, yeah, she's spoiled rotten. Not that she's bratty in the least - she just loves being the center of attention. Ashleigh is cute, smart and happy... just a terrific all-around baby.

Most of the time, that is.

We spent nine hours together in the car on two separate occasions last week on drives to and from Buffalo for Christmas. That's a long time for anyone to be confined in a small space, never mind a 1-year-old strapped into a car seat. On the way out there, she did great for 7-and-a-half hours. But for that last 90 minutes? As they say in Jersey, "fuhgeddaboudit."

She was not happy. And she was vocal about it. Her entire face was contorted into the most pitiful expression you'd ever seen. Her mouth, with every single one of her gappy, sparse baby teeth showing, was wide open. The pink tongue stuck partly out as scream after scream rolled over it. She screamed high, she gurgled low and gasped for breath and then she screamed again. And again. And again.

I have minimal experience with babies. But what I have learned from the few friends of mine that are parents is that sometimes, kids just need to cry it out. They get overtired and a good cry will help them fall asleep. I, in my blissful ignorance, assumed this would be the case.

Sadly, it was not to be. Lil' Ashleigh is a stubborn baby girl. And, apparently, she had drank some Red Bull or something, because she was not about to just roll over and fall asleep. Nope; she was just going to keep on screaming.

Jen (my sister) and I were in the car together... I was driving and even though cruise control was on, I didn't feel like it would be safe for me to turn around and start making funny faces to my toddler backseat passenger, so Jen was in charge of quieting Ashleigh down with the help of my shouted suggestions. It sort of went like this:

M - "Give her something, anything!"
J - "Here's a book, Ashleigh, you love books."
A - "Wahhhh... AIEEEEEE... EEEEEEK!"
M - "Try the cups! Try the cups!"
J - "Here's your stackable cups, you love those things. Remember, you were playing with them for an hour while we drove through Albany."
A - "AH-AH-AH... WAAHEEEE!"
M - "Try milk!"
J - "Do you want your milk?"
A - (takes bottle and throws it on floor, continues one constant scream, uninterrupted by a single breath, for 270 seconds straight)
M - "Try water! Try singing! Try baby-talk! Try yoga pressure points! Try speaking in tongues!"

This went on for half an hour until we both gave up and sat in silence, listening to her varying pitches of screams. It was an operatic performance, indeed; she put on quite the Baby Einstein aria for us.

Finally, we caved. Jen called our parents, who were driving in a different car. We ended up pulling into the next rest stop and switched cars for the final 25 minutes to Buffalo, both of us with a splitting headache.

My parents reported that Ashleigh didn't peep once for the entire ride.

Gah!