another uninnocent, elegant fall into the unmagnificent lives of adults

Grownups are hideously boring. That is the first thing you should know.

I contend that this isn't just my problem, though if it is I'd rather you not tell me. Mostly I think we tend to portray adulthood as being far more glamorous than it is in real life. Writers are maybe the most to blame for this phenom... I'm guilty of it myself. In times of serious observation, true love, indignant frustration, we paint pictures of grand moral dilemmas and lifelong repercussions, when really only temporary discomforts and states of mind are involved. Either way, it's all thoroughly believable. I've always believed it anyway, and now that I find myself in a very basic form of adulthood, I am bored absolutely to tears by the whole thing.

Days: Shower, Contacts, Teeth, Dress, Coffee, Work, Eat
Nights: Workout (or not), Eat, Sit, Sleep

Sometimes I read, sometimes I write. Sometimes we go out to dinner, and do all of the above-listed activities in public. There are also "things" involved always. Errands, meetings, business trips, personal trips, families and friends. But at this particularly boring point in my life, I find myself in short supply of all of those consistencies.

I was tasked recently to jot down a list of habits or hobbies that make me happy. "What do you do that makes you feel HAPPY" is jotted down on a post-it note stuck ominously to my desk. I glance at it a few times a day. And sometimes I set my coffee on it. Usually I glance at it for at least a few seconds in the first moments of my day, when I set my laptop on my desk and plug in for the long haul. That's all while disregarding stories about my coworker's boring evenings. "My wife and I went to the Opera" and "My husband and I drank a bottle of wine and watched a movie" and the list goes on. But it's not very long. A lot of the same. "Just went to the gym," is a classic. We're professionals. Weekday warriors. We only live from 9am-6pm when people know and respect us, when we have a say in some stuff, and before and after I fear we're spending a lot of time on auto-pilot.

Now. I get a lot of criticism from my domestic partner (who happens to be gainfully unemployed and living off of a nice inheritance for the time-being) that I'm only bored as a result of having just moved to Chicago during the worst Winter in the last three decades, and that I should stop complaining and just wait for Spring. "It's winter," he says. Though I don't recall winter ever being a cause for hibernation anywhere else I've ever lived. And if it ever was, I never complied. Only now do I find myself saying to myself, and anyone else who'll listen, "I don't do ANYTHING- let alone things that make me feel HAPPY." (The HAPPY was capitalized, by my assertion to emphasize its importance on my life's must have list.)

My second thought is that I was never bored in New York. I'll say that to you, because you won't roll your eyes, and if you do I won't even know. Truth be told, you can think what you want. New York's heartbeat was enough to keep mine going. Winter or Summer, night and day alike I spent hours doing the same things I do here and I felt thoroughly and consistently fulfilled. I made every effort in New York to remind everyone as often as they could stand to hear it that I was delirious there living parallel to everyone and everything else and would happily stay forever. Unreasonably loyal to a city whose magic can be easily lost on weaker people amidst tragedies, poverty and filth, its beauty was never once lost on me. And I would never have run out of things to do. Whether I actually did them or not.

Since I've been gone, (here is gone) I drift between sadness and listlessness. My mind swirls with the absence of words and thoughts, ideas or passion of any kind. I used to be able to look up and feel full. When all other things seemed like sacrifices and everything was hard, I can say for certain that I was never bored of it. Not for a single second. Certainly, to the Boyfriend's point, life in New York had its nuisances, so many that their listing accompanied nearly every social setting among inhabitants. So many that we shared. So much was so difficult and frustrating. Such big sacrifices which were so worthwhile.

One recurring theme I've noticed in adulthood is the ability to dissect every situation to its helpless foundation, a laundry list of facts and figures, which speak to your case. Rationale, or something. Anyway I've rationalized endlessly my decision to leave New York and the decision I face now to return or not to. There are bare, disinteresting points piled high on both sides of the argument. Words that probably mean something like "financial security" but are just ideas and therefore might not mean a thing at all. Either decision seems obvious and therefore boring to me right now. Doing the thing that all of our New York friends predicted by coming home, setting ourselves back fiscally on unmentionable levels, but my finding my heart beat again. Or staying in Chicago, a dark and simple place, where we will prosper and learn how to eat dinner at a dining room table.

I don't like the bottom of either decision. And needless to say there are probably 50 different degrees between both of those places and things that present some interesting alternatives. I'm down for those too. Until I decide that I'm going to wake up one day and just get HAPPY, I suppose I'll remain subject to that most dreadful of all dreadful adult ailments. A question mark perpetually dangling over my head, unanswered. Because I'm the only one who can answer it. I am, after all, an adult now. The question mark is so often incapable of being addressed because it's not even tangible enough to discern. And so instead, nothing will prevail. No decision, no action or reaction. Boredom, then, at least for the oh-so-adult-time-being.