Nice post!

Two 2-year stints with a 74-mile one way commute into Silicon Valley, CA.

a) The first was 1989-1991 (before highway 85 was built and 3/4-lane sections of Hwy 101 were 2/3 lanes. (heavy traffic, slow commute)
b) The second was 1997-1999 just going into the dot com boom/bust.

So, no real internet nor telework options at the time.

I drove every day, and had to fill up my pickup every other day. So, I got 1.5 full commutes (74 miles * 3) before I felt I needed to gas up. (When you need to drive a lot, little things like taking care of your car do consume much of that precious time out have remaining). And when your car breaks, you need to fix it quickly.

Part of my long distance was driven by buying a house.

I was not a book-on-tape person. I found it too distracting with interruptions to stay focused.
I found foreign language tapes/CDs worked really well, they kind where simple vocabulary is played (e.g. English/Russian). This helped me build up a surprisingly large vocabulary.
I also liked the time to think, but it did get boring after the 2-hr commute on a 5 day basis.

My social life was challenged, as my friends were in the Bay Area, and I needed to get home on a regular basis.

Things i would have done differently (given the constraints of the 1980s and 1990s:

I would have gone up early on Mondays, slept in my car that night, worked Tuesday, and drove home. That night, I’d have worked out at a gym (expensive back then, so maybe just personal exercise). I’d try to repeat that Thurs/Friday. This would return me about 5 hrs of commute time, two full rounds (gas and wear and tear). My social life would be a little better back then.

In my last role, as a Supervisor, I had a few people sleeping in their offices, and as long as they were discrete, it worked well and one guy, 75 yrs old, still working, was living in his office. But you have to be discrete, and can’t be walking in your underwear to the bathroom at 3 AM and have a security guard see you. No. No. No.

I regret the amount of drive time, as your health slowly suffers simply from the lack of exercise, and the poor diet items due to lack of time and driving. You gain weight. There are difficulties with the social factors also, it is harder to meet people. Also, the wear and tear on the vehicle is high, 348,000 miles on my vehicle when i needed to get rid of it for safety issues.

Positives, I saved money, bought nice property, and was able to stay out of Silicon Valley.

Your dad may be wrong about “never leaving your job”, but if you have a nice position, do not be caviler about it and see about making it work until something better comes along.

One other idea, may not be good, get a part time care giver role where you get highly discounted space to just be present in an older person’s home at night. One of my former co-workers has this set up. He is a geo-bachelor at this time, but he stays in a room, close to work, basically checking on the older person who lives there.

You can use the time to study for an area that will allow you better opportunities down the road. IT jobs are really coming now-a-days. I don’t like to study for “work” on my spare time as I feel I am giving a little too much to the employeer. But, if I study something that helps me at work, but better yet gives me more opportunity to leave work for a better job, that suits me well.

Good Luck!