Singing in the Car

I heard a loud honk behind me, and I gasped, a bit out of shock, a bit out of annoyance. I hate being honked at. But I couldn’t be too angry because I knew it was my fault. “Hurry up, Rose,” I whispered to myself. The light had turned green and my foot was still on the brake. The light had probably been green for a few seconds already and I hadn’t noticed. If only the impatient man behind me understood that I was attending to a matter much more important than transferring my foot from the brake to the gas pedal.

I didn’t particularly enjoy this hour-long commute to the office, and I enjoyed the job I arrived at even less. But here I was, paying my bills. The office I worked at reminded me a bit of Dunder Mifflin, just without the fun characters. In fact, it was mostly middle aged men who worked there; and then there was me, the 24 year old woman. I worked diligently, doing whatever I was asked. That usually meant filling in spreadsheets and calling companies to tell them about our latest promotion. I thought there were much more effective marketing strategies we could try, but the one time I voiced that opinion, I was met with a, “we’ve been doing this for a long time and it works fine.” I wasn’t one to stir the pot so I kept on with the phone calls. It didn’t matter anyway. This job was only temporary. That’s what I told myself eight months ago. On good days, I was able to sit at my desk and do my work unbothered. Other days, I had to drive around with my coworkers to make sales calls.

These sales calls were uneventful usually, like most things in that office. One time Clinton and I drove all the way to the headquarters of some motorcycle store we were supposed to sell to only to find out that the office was closed. Another time, Terrance and I drove past his house on the way to a call, and he made a comment about how his wife would be jealous if she saw him driving with a 24 year old woman in the passenger seat. I was entirely unamused of course, but he laughed to himself. I made a point of avoiding him around the office from then on; it wasn’t hard to do, as I didn’t spend much time interacting with anyone at work.

Everyday at five o’clock sharp (or slightly earlier if I could manage it) I got up from my desk. I drove an hour home to my two-bedroom apartment, which I shared with three roommates. I added a few items to my Etsy shop one day and uploaded a YouTube video the next, always wondering which one of these side hustles was going to take off and what exactly it was waiting for.

***

HONK HONK

The impatient man behind me wasn’t letting up. I was still attending to an important matter, and it would take me a few seconds longer. Earlier that morning when I got in the car, I thought, “You know what, I’m gonna listen to a podcast on the way to work this morning. Something educational. That would be a much more productive use of my commuting time, wouldn’t it?” Fifteen minutes into hearing two dry male voices discuss the state of the country’s economy, I changed my mind. As I approached a distant stop light, I hoped the light would turn red before I reached it. It did.

“Yes!” I exclaimed as I pulled to a stop at the intersection. I picked up my phone and opened Spotify. “Enough of this,” I chuckled. I clicked out of the podcast, and instead scrolled through my favorite songs, building a queue of music I would listen to. That’s when the honking began. I needed just a few more songs. Taylor Swift “Champagne Problems.” Yup, add to queue. U2 “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking for.” Add to queue. The Lumineers “Cleopatra.” Add to queue. Simon and Garfunkel “The Boxer.” Add to queue. “Stars” from Les Miserables. Add to queue.

“Okay, that should be enough to fill the rest of the time,” I said to myself. And finally, I pressed the gas pedal and drove onward through the green light, now, with music playing.

I hadn’t done much singing since my high school choir days, but these long commutes were helping me rediscover something I once loved. Listening to music the whole hour there and the whole hour back did feel a bit unproductive. Sure, maybe there were better ways I could be using my time, but belting out my favorite songs brought me a whole lot of joy. As I drove to a job I didn’t care much about, I sang every lyric like it mattered to me. And it did. My life had felt dry the past eight months, but singing in the car felt like passion reawakening.

“You booked the night train for a reason,” I sang. “So you could sit there in this hurt.” I took one hand off the steering wheel and waved it around passionately. “Bustling crowds or silent sleepers... You're not sure which is worse.”

When I left my desk that day, promptly at five o’clock, I was oddly excited for the drive home. I was discovering which songs were my favorite to sing along to, and I queued them all up.

Two passionate singing sessions a day, on the way to the office and the way back. Not bad for bookends on a boring day of work.

The next day I woke up to find it had snowed furiously throughout the night and I would not, therefore, be going into the office. Not the worst news in the world, but it did mean one thing. “No singing today.” I told myself. As a very respectful roommate, I wasn’t about to put my fellow apartment dwellers through that annoyance, nor myself through that embarrassment. My boss emailed me a few assignments, so I spent the day working on them. The next day brought more snow. Same routine. And the day after that, the snow still hadn’t cleared.

Halfway through the day, as I halfheartedly typed numbers into a still half empty spreadsheet (which I had started in the morning, and should have finished in half an hour), I had a burst of inspiration. For the next hour, while I was supposed to be working, I scrolled through Facebook Marketplace to see if anyone in the area was selling a guitar. Before I knew it, I was driving to a Walmart parking lot, trading a $50 bill for an old slightly beat up guitar, then driving back just like that, hitting every green light on the way back to the apartment.

“Hey Rose,” my roommate Julie greeted me as I walked through the door. “Whatcha got there?”

“I hope you don’t mind a little extra noise around here,” I responded as I sat on the futon, guitar in hand.

“Not if it means you’ll finally cheer up,” Julie said with a smile. I smiled back.

And the rest of the day, while I should have been working, I googled guitar chords to all of my favorite songs from my Spotify queue.