You know how much I love my commute downtown on the Loyola Shuttle - I love it a lot!
The shuttle doesn't run in the summer months as too few students are around. These are the months I keep the CTA bus tracker handy while getting ready in the morning continuously update myself on where the 147 is - and where it will be when I need it. Although the bus tracker is extremely convenient, the times are not always spot on as traffic lives and breathes a life of its own. Yet, I know that I have 12 minutes - sometimes 13 minutes - to make it from the door of my apartment to Sheridan Road to catch the bus. Sometimes I have to haul-ass, and if you know anything about how I am built, you know it's not always easy to bring up the speed to a "comfortable cruising pace." Speaking of comfortable, while the CTA tries, it's not always the most enjoyable ride when confronted with packed-in patrons, phones ringing, and the ever-so-sassy CTA voice marking stop after stop. *This bus runs express to downtown, standing passengers, please hold on at all times* Sitting passengers - please hold on at all times, too!
With the new semester has come the opportunity to ride again the Loyola Shuttle bus to and from work. While I am often the oldest person on the bus many mornings, I enjoy getting on to plenty of seats, relative quiet, and folks with books and notepads out studying and reading and highlighting and drawing and memorizing and ... you get the picture. This is my kind of atmosphere! This may sound like a slice of hell to many. Really - this is heaven? Boring! Not for me. It's my "morning time" to collect myself, center my thoughts, and if I want to read or write or listen to music - or anything else for that matter - I can do that. In the past I've tried to create a morning routine. These days, however, I do/go with whatever moves me. Some days I love to stare out at the life around me, other days I read for class, while others I just find myself lost in tunes on my I-POD. Whatever comes to me, I'm able to be lost in myself, something I don't know that we (as in the collective) do often enough. This is my time.
I've missed my time this summer. The CTA just doesn't lend itself to this like the shuttle does. I don't blame them, they do good with the resources they have to work with. Yet, this morning, "shuttling" to work, I've become aware of just how important my time is to me. Perhaps you have something like this in your life. If you don't, it may be worth exploring ways to have you time.
I've missed you, Loyola Shuttle.
