Did I mention that I quit that part-time driving job in downtown Calgary and today will begin looking for something close by? The reason? The short version is, "It was driving me nuts." The long version is as follows:

It slowly dawned on me why in the past there had been such a high turnover for the job. While they did pay better than average, the job itself was much more stressful than average for the same kind of work. It regularly involved (1) moving huge pick-up trucks (and sometimes bigger trucks) in and out of a cramped parking lot (2) negotiating horrible downtown traffic in rush hour while quickly figuring out where you were going and how to get there on a complicated one-way street system while maintaining your cool and making nice with customers who might be accompanying you (3) walking a city block to the back lot, over and over, through an oily, slippery shop, to bring vehicles to the front and (4) sometimes wandering in the rain looking for vehicles that weren't parked where they were supposed to be, once again feeling under the gun because some poor customer was waiting at the front, wondering when the heck his vehicle was going to be brought forward.

In addition, the commute really added an extra two hours a day, or more. I could tell myself I was reading, meditating, or what have you as I rode the trains and buses, but it still was not the best use of time.

Bottom line: the whole thing affected me to the point that I really wasn't much good for writing during the hours I was at home. And that wasn't what I had in mind when I had set out to take a "nice, easy, low-key half-time shuttle driving job" in the first place.