Commuter’s monologue

The windscreen wipers are paranoid. skreek pfaarp, skreek pfaarp, skreek pfaarp, skreek pfaarp. All that for a bit of drizzle. And the damn automatic setting is stuck on. It’s too expensive to get it fixed. Not worth the hassle either. When can I afford to leave the car a whole day with a mechanic? Especially for something so trivial. It is annoying though. Incessant, like the traffic. It takes me an hour to drive to work, an hour and 25 minutes to drive home. Quicker if I finish late and miss the rush hour. Was rush hour ever only one hour? It’s dark, I should be in bed with my wife. Why do I do this? I don’t even like my job. That’s all it is. A job. Not a vocation or a calling, or even anything really worthwhile. A job. It pays the bills. 40 hours a week plus 2 and a half hours a day driving, that´s 52 and a half hours, plus 2 or 3 hours over time. At least 55 hours a week. At least it’s only Monday to Friday. At least I’m not working shifts. I put in my years of shift work. Less driving, and less sleeping too. I still don’t think I’ve fully adjusted to a normal day – night rhythm. The alarm drives me nuts. How can it be that I’m never ready to wake up when I have to? I use my phone. Should I have it so close to my bed at night? Should I have it so close at all? I’d love to be rid of the damn thing. Available 24 hours. Bollocks. I want to be disconnected, off the grid, unreachable sometimes. These days, most of the time. Especially at night. Maybe I should at least put it on flight mode at night. But what if there’s an emergency? Don’t call me, I’m not a doctor. Overtaken by a truck again. They shouldn’t do that. I should be in a faster car; I deserve a better car. When will I earn enough to afford one? How did I get here? To this point in my life. I had bigger dreams than this. What went wrong? Did something go wrong? Or is this really all there is for me? An hour of driving in the dark and the drizzle… it’s heavier now, almost worth the windscreen wipers being on… to be bored or stressed for eight hours or more, to drive an hour and 25 minutes in the dark and drizzle to arrive home exhausted and demoralised. Only to repeat it all again the next day. WTF.