It’s 5:52 a.m. at Moynihan Train Hall. I’m balancing a bowl of fruit and my water bottle in one hand while tightening the straps of a backpack that’s carried by two laptops with the other. It’s the start of my twice-weekly commute between New York City and Washington, DC. I’m five months into this super trip and I can practically traverse the Northeast Corridor in my sleep. More importantly, I learned how to turn eight hours on Amtrak trains into one of the most productive parts of my work week. This arrangement allows me to refine my career in DC without leaving New York. I try to take the high-speed train when I can so I can get a little more sleep. Sienna Sullivan At 26 years old, I’m still early in my career and figuring out which corner of my industry I feel most at home in. I moved to New York four years ago to pursue extensive publishing and was working in lifestyle journalism when a good opportunity to go into academic publishing presented itself. As someone whose soft sciences degree has been collecting dust in my childhood bedroom closet, I was excited by the opportunity to do something new, something that would satisfy the research-loving part of my brain. The only downside, as you may have guessed, was that this career move seemed to involve a move to Washington, DC. The full-time hybrid position required me to be in the office on Mondays and Wednesdays. I take Amtrak trains to travel. Sienna Sullivan If the only thing standing between me and what I hoped would be an opportunity to hone my career was a twice-weekly office requirement, and the fact that I wasn’t ready to leave the life I’d built in New York, who’s to say I couldn’t, in the spirit of early 2000s icon Hannah Montana, get the best of both worlds? Before accepting the role, I weighed everything from ticket costs to the risk of burnout on the go. I knew I’d have to keep an eye on Amtrak flash sales and plan my trips well in advance, but by booking tickets five to six weeks in advance, I could keep train costs around $100 per round trip. Equally important, having family in Northern Virginia meant I could stay in the D.C. area between weekdays instead of taking four longer train trips each week. Spending up to $400 a month on transportation to work might seem excessive to some, but when I considered everything this new job would allow me while maintaining my life in New York, I felt like it was a living expense worth starting to budget for. I have made my train trips a productive part of my work day. While I’m on the train, I do freelance work. Sienna Sullivan My travel style is probably a nightmare for Type A travelers, but after making this trip so many times, I can confidently get from my apartment in Washington Heights to the Penn Station lobby in less than 30 minutes. This morning, that meant walking out the door to catch the subway around 5:25am to catch the 6:10am Acela to DC. The extra 30 minutes of sleep the high-speed rail offers is a rare luxury, since most Mondays I take the 5:40 a.m. Northeast Regional. Once I sit in my seat (always a window seat and today a reserved table), I pull out my laptop—not my 9-to-5 work computer, but the one I use for my freelance work. As is common for many creatives, I’ve balanced remote freelance assignments with full-time on-site roles for most of my career. When I started my new job in DC, I was worried that a super commute would make it impossible to maintain my freelance work alongside a full-time position. Instead, it turned out to be the opposite: my commute created the dedicated time I needed to make both work. One advantage of being on a train for up to eight hours a week (about three to four hours each way) is that there is nowhere else to be and not much else to do. My commute has become an integrated block of uninterrupted, billable time. For the next few hours, thanks to my phone’s personal WiFi hotspot, I’ll be able to work in my inbox, edit some projects, and send invoices. It’s a job I would otherwise have to do after an eight-hour workday, but instead, I can approach it with relatively bright eyes and a thick tail between 6 and 9 a.m. When Washington, DC comes into view around 9:04 a.m., I check the Metro schedules to see if the Red Line will get me to the office at 9:30 a.m. or if I’ll have to call a rideshare. Want more Business Insider in your news? Add BI on Google to make our reports easier to find when you’re looking for what matters. For the next 72 hours, I am basically a resident of the DMV and on Wednesday night I will reverse my trip back to New York. In some ways, I get the best of both worlds. I enjoy spending some time in DC each week. Sienna Sullivan I’ve realized that everyone has their own version of an unconventional work-life balance. In fact, on my first day at this new job, I took the elevator with a coworker who commutes between DC and New Jersey on a schedule surprisingly similar to mine. For me, long train journeys are a small price to pay for a position that allows me to pursue the parts of publishing I’ve always wanted to explore. Additionally, I’ve found ways to maximize my routine, both in transit and when I’m settled in each location for part of the week. While I’m in the DC area, I have regular weekday dinners and evenings with my parents, who I would otherwise only see a few times a year. I also make time for self-care activities, like yoga classes and long evening walks in the suburbs with our family dog. And on Thursday morning I’m back in New York. I can collaborate with friends who also work remotely, say yes to last-minute plans and birthday dinners, and still feel like I live in the city I worked so hard to build a life in.
