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Comment by ip26 | Hacker News Reader

It's wasted time on a large scale.

So is cooking, eating, sleeping, daydreaming...

I won't try to glorify a banal commute, but moving from place to place is pretty fundamental to living.

There is something about commuting that is a net stress inducer (whether by car or something else), whereas cooking is somehow relaxing.

Yeah, for me. But it is definitely not true for lot of people. My friends would drive long and through traffic to get some rather average restaurant food but cooking is pain.

I can feel stressed cooking, but usually that's from an Internal desire to create something good. It's also avoidable with frozen or delivery (or asking my wife to cook). The end result is often enjoyable, too.

Driving in traffic stress is external, reduces my faith in humanity, and is most often unavoidable. The end result (was) often that I was at work or home late. Not enjoyable.

For me at least.

I find driving my car quite enjoyable and my commute became much more fun when I started taking the backroads to the office.

I last had an uncomfortably long commute in 2003. I had 4 or 5 routes I could take, varying from almost totally Interstate freeways to almost no freeways at all. There was a small mountain range in the way. So get to work there could have been a pass via a private dirt road, a variation I never tried. Instead I went around the mountain via a freeway. I definitely rotated through the many routes that led to that freeway, especially when I was rested. Also the freeway gradually extended during the time I worked at that place, which added variety. On the other hand some of the non-freeway parts were fairly cranky because some of them were not empty backroads, but shortcuts through fully populated suburbia. But some routes were empty and enjoyable.

Now I have a 9-mile commute and I am using the empty side of the freeway both ways. Sometimes I take a coastal byway on the way home if it's summer.

Personally, I love daydreaming while in public transit (to the extent that often I dread arriving at my final destination), whereas cooking is a constant debate of "will this be edible today or will I have messed up food again" even though the failure chance is relatively low nowadays for me...

> There is something about commuting that is a net stress inducer (whether by car or something else)

Anecdotally I don't think this is true for walking and cycling commutes.

Cooking is not relaxing for me, just so you know.

I disagree with both of those points.

I've definitely had easy / comfy commutes. 10am-7pm workday, missed most traffic, easy 20 min rides, sometimes a little longer in the evening. Drive took me past a grocery store and a liquor store, so I could stop off and grab things. I don't miss it, but it wasn't a soul crushing slog.

I routinely freak out while cooking.

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