Boredom...

I've been feeling restless lately. And I don't think it's because it's winter and I've been staying in more than I normally do. Or at least, those aren't the only reasons.

My five-year college reunion was last spring, and my ten-year high school reunion is quickly approaching, and I think that there's a feeling in the air that five years after college and ten years after high school, I am at a crossroads and something should be happening.

After all, a lot of my friends are getting engaged, having kids, moving on to the next phases of their lives. And even though I am not ready to go to that place yet, I don't think it's unusual to feel left behind and wonder if it's time for me to do something new.

My friend A has this theory, that we are mentally trained to have big life changes occur about every four years. After elementary school, we have middle school for three years, then go to high school for four, then college for four. So now, five years out of college and over four years in Manhattan later, I am waiting for the next big phase of my life.

Sometimes I feel like I have been waiting for something for such a long time that waiting has become the status quo. Which means at some point I stopped acting of my own volition and got complacent, allowing things to happen to me rather than for me.

In an attempt to be proactive, last autumn I applied for graduate schools that would start in the fall of this year. And although I have been resistant to the idea of leaving Manhattan for many years, I applied to one school on the West Coast, thinking that perhaps it wouldn't be the worst idea in the world for me to experience something new.

After all, I plan on spending the rest of my life in New York, whether it's in the city or Westchester, and with the exception of a few years in Asia, I have spent most of my life in the Northeast. So perhaps it would be healthy for me to live in California for a few years and see what life is like on the other coast.

Within the next few weeks, I will make the decision of where I will be for at least the next two years. As the time approaches, I have been wondering if I could realistically leave New York for an extended time.

As difficult as it is to even imagine leaving behind the four important f's in my life (friends, family, food, furniture), I'm kind of excited at the prospect of a new start. I guess it reverts back to that feeling that I am at the point in my life where something has to happen or I have to start making moves. And California is a pretty big move.

(And if you're thinking furniture seems out of place in that list, you have no idea how attached I am to my bed. It's a grey suede bed frame with the most comfortable pillow-top mattress and the softest, fluffiest bedding on top.

I have an unhealthy relationship with my bed. If I am away from it for an extended period of time, I literally have a pep talk with it when I get home where I speak out loud to it: "Oh Bed, I've missed you so. I missed the way you feel, the way you smell, the way you support my lumbar when I am falling asleep. You are the most wonderful Bed in the world and I just want you to know that other beds may come and go, but you will always be the only Bed in my eyes.")

Either way, wherever I end up deciding on, graduate school will be a new development in my life, and in its own way, continue the cycle of starting a new phase of my life every 4-5 years. Which leads me to worry, if I'm still not ready to get married and start popping out babies in the next five years, what the hell am I going to do in 2015?

Hopefully something awesome, like winning the Olympic gold for curling in 2014, or even MORE awesome, the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest.

It's good to have goals in life.