Unimaginable Luxury

I'm over a month into my summer of complete freedom, and things couldn't be better. I'm jogging my 1.5 miles five days a week, sleeping 8 - 9 hours per night, reading a good novel, hanging out with friends every day, eating good food, drinking good coffee, seeing good shows, and generally living a life of, well, unimaginable luxury. It could only be better if The Daily Show and Colbert weren't in reruns now. And it would be better if the nightmares would stop. Seriously. Somehow when I'm completely relaxed during the days, my subconscious decides I'm not getting my RDA of stress, so it starts having stress dreams. I got a break for a few days when I went to the Adirondacks (so much fun), and for one day at home I was fine, but now the bad dreams have returned. It sucks not to look forward to sleep...usually it's so lovely.

But anyway, while I'm awake, I'm happy. This sort of worries me. By and large, the great people of the world can't help but do stuff. Great artists always do their art. Great activists are always looking for ways to help. People who achieve things do so, in part, because they can't stand sitting around and doing nothing. I love sitting around and doing nothing...or at least I love not working. I am doing a fair amount, I'm just not working on making anything happen. I've given up on all of my projects for the summer, deciding I'd rather just have a good time. I don't plan to travel, because I don't like the hassle of traveling. And this worry that I have isn't some deep, motivating force; it's just a general acknowledgment of an unproductive temperament. I'd like to achieve great things in life, but with two major personality traits working against me—satisfaction without accomplishment and reluctance to commit to one discipline at the expense of all others—that's going to be somewhat difficult.

Oh, I did win a trivia challenge this vacation. You can read all about my glorious achievement here. To read about the challenge, take a look at Day 1, and to navigate to all the puzzles, use Day 5. That was pretty exciting.

Sadly, part one of this summer is about to come to an end. I move out of my apartment on Monday, back for a month in Westchester with my family. I think it'll be nice to hang out in the burbs for a while, and it will make the transition back to school more natural, but I'm also going to really, really miss living in the city and in this apartment. My roommates are awesome, and the freedom of New York living is unparalleled. I can hop on the subway and be anywhere in Manhattan in a half hour. It's awesome. I do like Westchester, and I love spending time with my family, and I'll be coming back into the city frequently, but it sure won't be the same. I'll be doing lots of errands and driving around and probably spending much more time in the house than I currently do in my apartment. So here I am, down to my last three days as a true New Yorker. It's the end of an era, folks.