It's not my job that is killing me. It's commuting.
almost exactly two years ago, I had a ~6 mile commute and a job that was crushing me, but in a way it was good because I had just come off an apocalyptically bad relationship, we were told we had to stay indoors anyway, I was broke (see bad relationship, supra), and so what did I have to do except work 65-75 hours a week and say to myself “well, at least I have my job and I'm good at it.”
Then Big International Conglomerate decided that they were going to lay off all their designers (not just in my product line, but several) US-wide and outsource that work to Bangalore. Then, we'd all have the opportunity to apply for a handful of design center jobs ostensibly located in Texas thinking we'd go all Hunger Games fighting each other for those positions. What actually ended up happening is we all ended up landing better jobs; three of us myself included are now working at a privately owned but fairly good sized (I want to say 9 offices in several states) competitor to my previous specific product line, and I got a raise of about 40K a year but was made salary so in effect I'm making a little more than I was previously but nobody expects me to work more than 45-50 hours a week. Great, huh?
Here's the problem. My commute is something like 21-26 miles door to door, depending on which way I go. 15 of those miles are highway. It takes me usually about 35 minutes to get to work in the morning and anywhere from 45 minutes to whenever (it's been over an hour before, driving straight through) to get home at night. Some days I stop at a thrift store or something halfway because I need to get out of the car. Due to the unique area I'm in, there's not a whole lot of alternate routes because there's several restricted access governmental agency campuses lined up in a straight line between my work and my home so there's a couple highways and only a couple secondary roads that actually take you from one to the other. I would rather drive a hundred miles in free flowing traffic than deal with this bullshit. I end up angry and disappointed in humanity because of all the rudeness and stupidity I see on a daily basis – people driving with their brights on, with no lights on, passing on the shoulder or on ramps and then cutting back into traffic (the road I commute on usually is a four lane highway but it's a weird one where the shoulders don't exactly exist in all areas and you'll have things like bridges with only 3–4 feet between the white line and the barrier) and just generally being fucking rude, douchebaggy, hateful people.
I feel like I should be grateful that I landed where I did, but the thing is they are very old school and I feel like it hurts management's perception of me the more I WFH and also they don't even believe in VPN so practically I would need to come in 2-3 days a week anyway no matter what.
I really don't know how much longer I can do this. “Move closer” isn't an option, at least yet, because I really only have about $10K in savings not counting retirement and with interest rates the way they are today mortgages are unaffordable unless I have a partner which I don't. I don't see the point in paying thousands of dollars to move to another rental, especially when my rent is cheap and I like my landlord. (I probably wouldn't move closer, but farther away in a different direction so I could live away from cities. Ending up with a longer but more palatable commute, and also the ability to piss off my front porch at will without anyone caring, which is a life goal.) Any advice?