Over the years, long drives have bothered me less and less. A 3-hour trip that used to be an ordeal now goes by relatively quickly. An overnight busride doesn't seem like a big deal, even if I don't get much sleep.
I can probably attribute most of this to practice. From an early age, my brother and I had training for sitting quietly. The next level developed during my part-time job as a museum guard; standing silently in a room for 3-5 hours at a time puts sitting noisily in a car in perspective. My job in the Yukon also helped, because in addition to long drives from camp to resupply, I spent many mornings sitting against a tree watching a squirrel's territory, observing everything that happened in a two-hour window.
Of course, it's one thing to endure long periods of driving or similar boredom, and it's another to enjoy the time spent in inactivity. Worrying is a not-so-fun way of wiling away the hours, but there are happier types of thinking that can fill the time. For example, some of my least constructive hours have been spent planning strategies for Civilization games. More recently, I've enjoyed thinking about different ways to pay off college loans.
In a classic twist of fate, as I find my patience for long drives increasing, I find my physical discomfort from driving for a long time is also rising-- there's no way to sit in perfect comfort. I suppose that's the way of things.
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