Get On Board
My pal Reeves over at his Meanderings blog is doing a neat little exercise. I’ll quote the man himself at length:
People in major cities spend a lot of time on mass transit; by my rough estimate, most New Yorkers spend an hour per day, 7 hours per week, 30 or so per month, and a dozen or so full days per year on a transit vehicle of some kind. That’s a lot of livin’.
So, hopefully with your help, we’ll be chronicling those 12 days of life. This is not meant for “Weird Shit That Happened on the L Train.” This is meant for the everyday, the normal, the poignantly average.
He’s done a few so far, and they’ve lived up to the “poignantly average” directive. Reeves solicited guest contributions, and I was more than happy to oblige. You can read my entry here. Regular readers of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun will recognize the running diary format from various Gossip Girl and Oscar posts; I’m nothing if not predictable.
I call it a neat exercise because riding the train is such a monotonous, soul-crushing, utilitarian activity. If you use mass transit regularly, you truly enter autopilot. Not to say that I did a terribly good job, but actually looking around and jotting down my thoughts, instead of just staring blankly across the aisle or listening to my iPod, was an interesting change of pace. I didn’t expect to find the inspiration for the Great American Novel in a crumpled up Metro, but it was nice to actually experience my ride. I recommend you read Reeves’s entries, because he’s better at this sort of thing than I am.
And while you’re there, you might as well throw Meanderings into your bookmarks or RSS reader or whatever it is you use to keep track of the vitally important things that you must read daily. It’s like a smarter and more disciplined Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun. His “This Week’s Best Profile” and “I didn’t know this yesterday” features are especially thoughtful and eminently stealable.
Tags: mass transit, Meanderings, other people's blogs
This entry was posted on Thursday, August 13th, 2009 at 6:00 pm and is filed under Reading and Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 14th, 2009 at 9:54 am
I think I might give this try once I move to the city. This was really interesting. I’m sure thoughts like these go on through even the most uncreative among the masses yet their thoughts are never blogged about.
In a way this is kind of how I feel about every occurrence in my life. I wish I could jot down all the thoughts that happen in my head during a particular event in my life.
July 21st, 2010 at 10:21 pm
Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun » Blog Archive » Get back on board says:[...] those interested in my first On Board submission, you can get to it through here. And, as always, if you aren’t already reading Meanderings, you’re cheating [...]