After almost a year and a half of leisure, today was the first day at a new job.

Tried to find jobs in the city, but the place that finally seemed like a great fit is in Palo Alto. And not the step-off-the-train University Ave. Palo Alto that has been my sole view into this town, but a 25 minute shuttle from the train out into the hills.

To save you the math, my commute was four hours today. Two hours on each end, including: getting to the train station, waiting for the train to depart (cuz you gotta give yourself enough time as not to miss the train), the train ride itself (45-minute express trains both ways, btw, so it could conceivably lengthen on some days), and a shuttle.

Now, we’ll return to the commute aspect in a bit, but in the meantime we’ll take a nice intermission. The job is great. Everyone is incredibly nice. It’s just a bunch of really smart, talented people, who seem like they will be a great group of people to get to know and work with. I can’t go into a lot of detail, as I’m trying for once to keep at least one of my jobs off of Google. The day flew by (although a mountain of HR forms always does strange things with time) and it is a place that seems like a potential good fit long-term.

Only not with that commute (oh, intermission is over now). It basically comes down to a few factors that will determine how the commute issue plays out.

The first, of course, is a matter of whether the job might possibly, at some point, migrate to their SF office. I didn’t broach this in the initial interview as it seemed like bad form, wanting to leave the office before you even start; best to get hired and establish yourself before bringing that sort of thing up. Working in SF would shave a good 3+ hours off of my commute, so it’s not a trivial amount of time. So, the issue is whether the SF office is an option. That determines every other course of events.

If the job is going to be in Palo Alto for a good while, then it comes down to two short-term choices: bike or car. The bike shaves time off both sides of the train (less on the Palo Alto side), although what time it doesn’t save on the PA side, it makes up for with flexibility. There are four shuttles that run from my company to Caltrain, they run at 3:30, 4:30, 5:30, and 6:30. Now, the first two shuttles just say slacker… even if you come to work crazy-early, leaving that early looks bad. Plus, I don’t want to get up early enough to justify leaving that early. The shuttle also has a strange element in that it takes you to the California Avenue Station, rather than the University Avenue station. Two express trains stormed past me standing there, but stopped at the next station down the line. And the shuttle only goes to that stop in the afternoon, so… a bit strange. So, definitely worth controlling my ability to leave work whenever I want to, rather than let the shuttle schedule dictate things.

The bike adds some freedom but, let’s face it, the car really opens everything up. Parking at work is not a problem. The only issue is parking in the city, and nothing is more fun than driving into the city to go around in circles for 20+ minutes looking for parking.

So, the next issue becomes stay in the city or move toward Palo Alto… which isn’t one that I would take lightly. I certainly won’t do anything like that for a few months at least. Have to make sure the job is as good a fit as it seems. Have to see what all these new expenses (paying today’s rent prices, car payment, gas, insurance, etc.) will leave me with as far as a salary.

But, like I said, a lot of these things cancel one another out. I don’t want a bike in the city (or I’d've had one by now), and I don’t want a car in the city, so if there’s a chance that in, say, six months we could revisit whether I could be based out of SF, it might be worth getting a cheap used car and driving up and down the peninsula for a few months.

Lots of if/then/elses here… but the upside is that I like the job. Now, it’s just about figuring out how to have a non-commute life outside of it.

I honestly can’t figure out how to fit certain things in. Like, the gym: too early to go before the commute, to close to bedtime by the time I get home. Doing my contract web job on the side will primarily need to be weekends, although that should launch within 2-3 months, so short-term. And, yes, the novel WILL BE FINISHED this summer, so a solution to get that sorted out needs to happen soon. That said, I banged out a LOT of reading today, but there’s a bit too much on my plate to accept a high page count in reading as enough work/life balance.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 12th, 2006 at 8:36 pm and is filed under diary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.