The Kids Table

I wake up everyday, I go to work, and I sit at work all day doing whatever comes across my desk, rinse and repeat. I’m trying to tell myself that I’m acting responsibly at the moment. That saving money and living simply is the prudent thing to do. With so much uncertain playing it safe is the right course of action. I’d rather not be acting like this. I would much rather be looking for an apartment, after all in these times it isn’t so hard anymore. But I just can’t bring myself to do it. I just don’t have a clear enough picture of the future yet. I know that we never know what is going to happen in life and ultimately the only certainty that exists is uncertainty but still… Being responsible is not always fun, right now what it means from me is I’m stuck, stuck with four hours of commuting every day, stuck living with my parents in the suburbs, stuck living in a place where I have no friends around and stuck in a life that’s not really my own.

It is not the one I would choose for myself. By the time I get home every night, I’m tried I don’t want to expend any effort to do anything, that’s just the reality and now that its getting colder and colder, and darker and darker that instinct really kicks in. Everyone hibernates during the winter time. As a case study for this I’ll cite my budget from two years ago. When I lived in the city last I kept an excel spreadsheet with all of my income and expenses, it helped me stay on budget, spend less money then I made, and also helped me cut down on unnecessary expenses. During the winter months, even with the inevitable holiday spending required I put away a lot of money every single month. During the summer months I broke even every month, just barely over the three ‘summer vacation’ months, when I was going out constantly with friends. When it’s cold outside people just want to relax and not go places, when it is beautiful and warm everyone wants to go out all the time. So it is not just any one single factor that’s been limiting my activities.

Even if I was on my own I doubt I would be doing anything all that exciting. So I’m acting responsibly and doing what I can to lock down this job, to save money and give myself a bigger cushion. I’m replacing the money I spent in Israel and trying to give myself more leeway for the future. But it’s not always easy, some days saying that to myself doesn’t make me feel any better about my current situation. But I’m getting there, I’m no the right track, I’m acting like an adult not a child. You spend your whole life trying to get to this point, and in one of the great ironies of life you spend your whole life trying to sit at the adults table at parties and when you finally get to the point where your sitting with the adults you look back at the kids table and say wait… its wasn’t so bad there… I don’t want to sit with the grownups, this table is boring the kids table it fun, let me go back there. But it’s too late and there is no point in looking back.