What Changed After Moving Close to the Office

I Was Spending 3 Hours 20 Minutes on the Subway Every Day

Home to office: 1 hour 40 minutes one way. Two transfers. Round trip: 3 hours 20 minutes. Over a year, roughly 800 hours. 800 hours is enough to seriously learn something. But in practice I watched YouTube or slept on the train. (800 hours of YouTube. Kind of horrifying to think about.)

When my lease came up in September, I decided: moving near the office.

Rent Went Up by $285 a Month

Previous place: Nowon district (northern Seoul suburbs), jeonse deposit of $165K with implied monthly interest of about $390. New place: a studio near Gangnam (the business district where my office is), $2,100 deposit with $680 monthly rent. Effectively $285 more per month. That's $3,420 a year. I decided to frame it as the price of reclaiming 800 hours of commute time. $4.28 per hour. (Not sure if rationalizing like this is healthy, but here we are.)

The place is definitely smaller. From 75 square meters to 23. I threw out half my stuff. Clothes I never wore, books I never read, random junk I'd accumulated. Sold 43 items secondhand during the move. Total revenue: $134. (Took a day and a half to sell all that, so the hourly rate was... let's not calculate.)

Mornings Transformed

I can wake up at 7:50 and still arrive at 9 with time to spare. Before, I woke at 7 and rushed out. Those 50 minutes of difference completely changed my quality of life. I brew coffee, read some news, walk to work. Fifteen minutes on foot.

But there's an unexpected side effect. Since the office is close, I keep thinking "I can sleep just a bit more" and end up staying up later. My total sleep time actually decreased. Shorter commute, shorter sleep. A bit ironic.

Evenings Opened Up

Before, I'd get home at 8:30 after work. Shower and eat, it's 9:30. Too exhausted to do anything by then. Now I'm home by 6:30. Two extra hours.

What did I do with those 2 hours? First month: side project work. Second month onward: Netflix. (It always ends up here.) But month three, I joined a neighborhood gym. Working out 3 times a week now. Absolutely wouldn't have happened with the old commute.

Relationships Shifted Too

I eat dinner with coworkers more often now. Before, "I live far away" was my excuse. That excuse no longer works. It's nice sometimes and exhausting other times. Some evenings you just want to be alone.

On the flip side, I've drifted from old neighborhood friends. People I used to eat with in Nowon. We went from meeting twice a month to not seeing each other in three months.

Not Going Back

Three months in, would I go back? Absolutely not. The extra $285/month stings, but reclaiming 3 hours 20 minutes daily is worth more.

If there's one regret, it's not moving sooner. I spent two years commuting from far away to "save money," and thinking about the time lost over those two years hits differently now.