Suburban sprawl?

It occurred to me, I haven’t had to commute to work via car since I was 23. That’s thirteen years of public transit and enforced daily exercise. For someone as lazy as me, this is an objective good. Plus, low mileage! Not to mention the fact that I can feel virtuous about my tiny carbon footprint. I realize that this experience isn’t the American norm, at least for those not living in large metropolitan areas, but since I do, I feel like it’s a perk I should embrace.

So, as I ponder the next step in my vaunted career path, I weigh the pluses and minuses of prospective jobs thusly: interesting subject matter (am I doomed to slog through medical treatises?), worthwhile mission (can I get jazzed about promoting the mission of craven capitalists?), workplace ambiance/potential coworkers (is it in industrial park purgatory, populated by people in tacky suits and eighties hairstyles?), and location location location.

On the last point, notwithstanding my inherent laziness and the fact that my criteria for driving days expand as time goes on (from subzero temperatures only to holidays where this is no traffic, days I can’t find my keys in a timely fashion, and days of “eh, an umbrella for this drizzle is too much bother”), the thought of having to hop into my car every day depresses me. In that universe, I see myself never walking for the hell of it again, sporting a Buddha belly, and turning into one of those people who buys a gym membership and never uses it.

But for every cool job in the city, there’s probably hundreds of applicants. Depressing. Do you aim for a boring place in an awesome location? Or do you embrace the exciting-sounding job in suburban hell? I’m finding myself, when presented with a job that otherwise looks good but is in nondescript suburb X, researching complex series of bus and train transfers that would no doubt take me three hours one way to navigate. Gah.

Such are my thought processes for today. Also, how dorky is it that I wore my glasses today and somehow chose the top that's the exact same color green. Why not just wear matching eye shadow and be done with it?