An Argument for My Boring* Life

The boy and I just returned home from a short weekend in Seattle. On Saturday night, we had made reservations to have a nice dinner. We were finished around 11:30 and, instead of digging up something crazy to do, we both agreed that it would be most lovely to go back to the hotel, watch some crappy cable, and go to bed.

This is not an uncommon turn of events for me (minus the cable).

Of course, sometimes I like to go out and do it up big. Sometimes. Or maybe, more aptly put, occasionally. But, as I stated last week, I like getting enough sleep and getting it during normal sleeping hours.

I am a totally nerdy and uncool person, and so I might as well just get on with it and admit that, yeah, I like to do the dishes. Yeah, I like to clean the house on the weekends. Yeah, I like to eat homemade food. Yeah, I usually would prefer to have people over to play board games or watch a movie instead of going down to the local club.

Yeah, all of those things are true. All those, and so much more. My very dear Londonian friends think I am an easy houseguest because I don’t (usually) want to go see Big Ben or have a guided tour of Buckingham Palace. I want to play video games, have some dinner, take a stroll down to the local urban farm to peek at the animals, and then stay up all night watching reruns of random TV shows (ok, so that’s in direct contrast to my statements about getting sleep, but whatever).

And sometimes I go through a brief mourning period for the totally awesome crazy person that maybe I could have been. But you know what? I already lived the part of my life where I was looking to have experiences just because they would make a good story. And I racked up some good stories while I was at it (be careful what you wish for), and that’s fine. I guess I’m over it – they don’t impress me much.

SO

I was thinking about this, and I realized that my lifestyle is really not so pathetic at all. It was only fairly recently in human history that the concept of such an array of leisure activities even cropped up. People didn’t used to have regular (nightly) outings to various entertainment venues. Outings used to be an occasional treat. (And I’ll bet that gave them a better shot at appreciating those outings.)

But as with many other luxuries – chocolate, butter, heated pools, movie theaters, shopping malls, and so on – we now live in a time and place where it is common to be quite spoiled and self-centered in the way we spend our time and money. We live in a gluttonous bubble.

Perhaps, due to, oh, I don’t know, this, this, or this, we would do well to reign in our high-impact lifestyles and return to slightly simpler pleasures.

And maybe I’m just a little ahead of the game in that department.

Of course, more likely this is just what I tell myself to make me feel better about the fact that I am currently sitting in a (very cozy) fleece mumu in front of my laptop with the daydream of an early bedtime in the back of my mind.

But it doesn’t make my point any less true.

*Tune in later this week for why I don’t actually think my life is boring.