When I’m Sitting in the Lot Waiting, That’s When I Write

I drive for a couple of different rideshare apps, mostly at night. People always think the job is about driving, but honestly, it’s mostly about waiting. Waiting for a ping. Waiting for a passenger to come out. Waiting in empty lots at two in the morning with the engine off so I don’t burn more gas than I earn.

Most nights, I end up in the same places. The grocery store lot on Westfield. The alley behind the big hotel downtown. The long row of spaces next to the 24-hour gym where I sometimes watch people run on treadmills through the window. All these spots have become like little waystations in my head. Places I pass through but never stay in for long, even though sometimes it feels like I spend half my shift staring at the same streetlights.

There’s a certain kind of quiet that hits during those waits. It’s not peaceful, exactly. It’s more like being stuck in a paused moment. You’re not moving, but you’re not done working either. You can’t go home, but you’re not really anywhere. It used to drive me crazy.

At first I’d scroll my phone endlessly. Social media. News. Random videos that made the minutes go faster but left my brain feeling fuzzy and crowded. Sometimes I’d snack just to kill time, even though I wasn’t hungry. Anything to make the waiting feel like something.

Then one night last winter, I was sitting in this poorly lit corner of a strip mall lot, engine off, breath fogging up the windshield. My back hurt from driving for too long, and the heat in my car had already faded. I was bored in a way that felt physical, like my bones were buzzing from emptiness.

I grabbed an old receipt from the cup holder and wrote three words on the back of it: “Tonight felt long.”

I didn’t know why I wrote it. I didn’t plan to write it. I didn’t even think it would help. But somehow, those three words made me feel a little less like a ghost floating between pickups.

The next night, I did it again. Different words. Same receipt. Then eventually I grabbed a small notebook at a gas station while buying coffee. Nothing fancy. Just something to write in.

That notebook has followed me through hundreds of empty lots since then.

I don’t write essays or stories or anything big. Most of the time, it’s just one minute of scribbles between rides. Little bits. Tiny pieces of the night I want to save. Sometimes I write something about a passenger I dropped off. Sometimes I write something about how the sky looks over the strip mall lights. Sometimes I write things I don’t want to say out loud.

The notebook sits in the side pocket of my door. I keep a pen clipped to the sun visor. When the app goes quiet, I reach for them without thinking now. The habit built itself.

A few months into doing this, I noticed something. I wasn’t dreading the waits anymore. I wasn’t scrolling and zoning out. I wasn’t chewing through bags of chips out of boredom. I was noticing things.

Like the way the karaoke bar on 4th Ave always has one guy who steps outside between songs to talk loudly on the phone. Or how the laundromat next to the pizza place has this glow that spills across the lot in a way that makes the asphalt look like it’s underwater. Or how some passengers walk toward your car slowly when they’re anxious, and others walk like they’re trying to outrun the day they just had.

Little details. Things I never saw when I treated the waits like dead time.

One night, around one in the morning, I parked in a nearly empty lot outside a movie theater. The place had closed hours earlier, but the parking lot lights stayed on. There was a small pile of popcorn someone had dumped on the ground, and the wind kept blowing kernels around like tiny white bugs. I sat there, listening to the heater rattle, and wrote a single sentence: “This place feels like a paused story.”

That sentence stuck with me for days. Not because it was good, but because it was true. The whole night-shift driving life feels like a paused story sometimes. A story that starts and stops in random places, with strangers hopping in and out.

Writing gives me a way to make the pauses feel like something.

I remember one passenger who sat in the back seat crying quietly after a breakup. She didn’t talk much. She didn’t need to. When she left, I pulled into the side of the road and wrote: “Some people leave their silence behind in the seats.”

Another time, I picked up a guy who talked nonstop for twenty minutes about the sandwich shop he wanted to open someday. He had it all planned out—the bread, the signs, even the uniforms. His hope was so bright it made the car feel warmer. After he got out, I wrote: “Some dreams glow louder than headlights.”

Other nights, the writing isn’t deep at all. Sometimes I write, “I’m tired,” or “This coffee tastes burnt,” or “Why does this lot always smell like old fries?” But even the boring lines make the time pass differently. They make the night feel like something I’m in, not something I’m waiting for.

There’s one lot I stop in more than any other. It’s behind a diner that closes at ten. The owner leaves the parking lights on, probably for safety, but they give the whole place a comforting glow. I sit there a lot, notebook in my lap, windows cracked open a little, listening to the buzzing streetlights and the occasional whooshing of a car passing by on the main road.

Once, I wrote: “This parking lot feels like it knows me.”

It sounds odd, I know. Parking lots aren’t sentimental by nature. But when you spend enough nights in the same places, they start to feel like little pieces of your life.

Sometimes passengers ask me what I do while waiting for rides. I usually joke and say, “Stare into the middle distance,” or “Think about my poor choices,” or something like that. I don’t tell them I write. Not because it’s embarrassing, but because it’s mine. And I like being able to keep one thing for myself in a job where strangers sit three feet away from me all night.

The notebook is almost full now. The back cover is bent from getting shoved into the door pocket. The pages are soft from handling. A few look messy because I wrote them in a hurry right before a pickup. But the whole thing feels like a collection of nights I didn’t want to forget.

A couple weeks ago, I sat in the diner lot again and wrote something that surprised me: “These pauses might be the real parts of the job.”

Driving people around pays the bills. But the waiting—those quiet minutes where the world holds still—those are the moments where I actually hear myself think. And when I write something down, even if it’s only one line, the wait feels like a place instead of a void.

It’s strange. Writing in parked cars wasn’t something I planned. It wasn’t a hobby I picked intentionally. It just happened in a moment when the silence felt too thick, and I needed somewhere to put it. And now it’s the one thing that keeps the nights from blending together.

Last night, while I was parked behind the grocery store, I watched the sky lighten just a little even though the sun hadn’t risen yet. There was this soft blue tint spreading over the buildings. I wrote, “The night doesn’t end all at once. It fades like someone turning a dimmer.”

Then the app pinged, and I drove off.

That’s how most nights go. A few lines, a pickup, another wait, another place to sit, another page. Little bits of thought scattered between strangers and streets.

Sometimes I wonder what I’ll do when the notebook fills up. Will I buy another one? Probably. Will I actually read the old pages? I don’t know. Maybe not. Maybe the point isn’t to remember everything. Maybe the point is just to give the thoughts somewhere to land.

I’m not trying to write anything big. I’m not trying to change my life. I just like having something to hold onto during the slow hours. Something that makes the waiting feel like more than just time slipping by.

If someone else drives nights like I do, waiting in dark lots between trips, maybe they’d understand. Maybe they’d get why scribbling a sentence on a cold night can make the world feel steadier.

Sometimes I think about how strange this job is. You meet people for five minutes, maybe ten, and then they’re gone forever. You learn tiny facts about them—you hear a laugh, a sigh, a rant about their coworker, the way they talk when they're nervous, the places they go when they're tired or heartbroken. But you never know the whole story. You’re just catching a snapshot. A single frame from a much longer movie you’ll never see.

It used to bother me, that feeling of being on the edge of everyone’s lives without ever stepping inside. But writing about these little moments makes it feel less lonely. It gives the fragments somewhere to rest. I don’t write names or details that would matter to anyone but me. Mostly I write what the moment felt like, how the world looked through the windshield right then, or how the passenger’s voice carried a whole day inside it.

One time, I picked up a woman who said nothing for the first few minutes. Then out of nowhere she asked me if I ever felt like I was driving in circles—not just literally, but in life. I didn’t know how to answer. I laughed and said, “Sometimes.” She nodded like that was enough. When she got out, she told me, “Thanks for the ride,” in a voice that sounded both tired and grateful. After she left, I parked outside a pharmacy and wrote, “Some people ask questions that aren’t really questions.”

Little lines like that fill the notebook. Stuff I would forget if I didn’t write it down. Stuff that would vanish the way most nights do—into tired muscles, empty coffee cups, and half-remembered routes through dark streets.

The truth is, I don’t know where any of this writing is going. Maybe nowhere. Maybe somewhere small. Maybe someday I’ll look back and see a pattern in all these messy lines. But right now, it’s enough that the writing exists at all. It’s enough that the pauses don’t feel wasted. It’s enough that I don’t feel like I’m floating through the night with nothing to grab onto.

I guess what I’m really trying to say is this: you don’t need a desk or a perfect plan or some big dream to start noticing the pieces of your life. Sometimes all you need is a parked car, a quiet minute, and a pen that still works even when the temperature drops.

If someone else out there is spending long nights waiting—whether they’re driving, or sitting in a booth, or working a shift where the world forgets they exist—I hope they find something small that helps them hold onto themselves. For me, it’s these little lines in a beat-up notebook.

And honestly, I’m okay with that.

And if you want to read something that made me feel less alone on nights like these, here’s a story that hit close to home for me.