They see me rollin’.
I generally drive between 90 minutes and 2 hours every day. That’s an average to shorter-than-average commute for where I live, and I’m not complaining at all. If anything, driving to work early in the morning gives me time to organize my brainmeats enough to form coherent sentences.
Driving home, though, is kinda great. It’s always the longer of the two drives, but I rarely care how long it takes me. Don’t get me wrong, I know how long it takes me — I’ve even timed it — but that has more to do with my number obsession than it does worrying about the amount of time I’m spending in the car. When I drive to work in the morning, my arrival time is a paramount concern, as I hate being late. But driving home? Not so much.
Sitting in the car in the evening gives me the chance to think, to let my brain work on story problems, generate new ideas, rework concepts, or just space out and listen to old-school hip-hop on XM. It gives my brain mandated downtime, time when it has no other demands on it than the fairly automatic process of sitting in traffic.
Now, if I could just figure out a way to write in traffic…
How about you, folks? When’s your brain’s downtime?
47 Echo 
My commute is less than two miles. I barely have time to listen to one story on NPR before the ride is over. I guess my mental downtime is when I’m running. Sure, I’m always thinking about something as I run, but it’s undirected thinking. Whatever comes to mind just rattles around in my head as I keep throwing one foot in front of the other. Sometimes I’ve worked out plot problems or had ideas for enhancing stories.
When I run, my only thought is usually “don’t die.”
Yeah, I’m bad at running.