Many people imagine the perfect workplace, but I have always included a key aspect—how to get there. I don’t mean how to strategically arrange your life to ultimately arrive at the place and position you’ve always aspired to. I literally mean the commute to my studio whenever I moved AURAS to a new location. Before he retired, my brother Al lived in Laurel, Maryland, and worked in Springfield, Virginia, often suffering two-hour commutes both ways.
I would never have tolerated that, but he put up with it for twenty years. For me, spending time in a car, in traffic, is a waste of time and energy. The closer I live to work, the better. But how close? For me, a commute is a Goldilocks conundrum.
My first studio was in my apartment in a living room corner. I lived near the National Zoo just off Connecticut Avenue in a one-bedroom apartment. When I stopped freelancing and began working at home, my commuting time became zero. For someone who disliked any commute, it would seem ideal. Soon the space became stifling and, despite many walks around the zoo, I always returned to the apartment wishing I had someplace else to go. My mother would call in the middle of the day and ask why I wasn’t at work, and I would reply, “Mom, I AM working.”
No commute was just too damn close.
To be more productive, I needed another separate location. I rented office space that was an easy walk three blocks away. It was just far enough to feel “real” and too close to get in the car. It made a difference. After I fell in love and moved to Ontario Road in Adams Morgan, my commute was slightly longer, but still only a few minutes away by car.
It felt about just correct.
Then Helen and I noticed an old townhouse for sale a block from ours, and it became the new home of AURAS Design. Only a few hundred yards from our house, the urge to pop into the studio after dinner was impossible to ignore.
It was just too close.
Soon, we had a toddler and another baby on the way. We moved from D.C. to Silver Spring to a new house in an old neighborhood five miles away from AURAS. On the very first commute back to my new home, the trip took almost ninety minutes. A rare weather phenomenon called a derecho—a powerful localized wind—knocked down trees and utility poles between the studio and my new home. Were the Fates laughing at my hatred of commuting?
A more typical commute averaged twenty to thirty minutes. I did discover a benefit to my longer drive. I could tell Helen I was getting ready to leave and had a plausible half-hour actually to get in the car.
Still, for me, it was just too far.
When we decided to build a bigger studio, we looked around downtown Silver Spring, Maryland, and found the ideal building. It was a mile and a half from our home in Sligo Park Hills. A longish walk, a nice bike ride, and a quick commute by car. Not close enough to impulsively zip over, but a short trip whenever the first-floor tenant accidentally set off the fire alarm. There were various reasons I chose our current studio, but a critical one for me was the distance from our house. In the twenty-two years at the AURAS Building, I have saved 184 travel days, 40,000 miles, and 2,500 gallons of gas by not traveling even the short commute to my old Adams Morgan studio.
And it’s been just right.
