So, they get to change?

Coming home from a bonfire enjoyed with Aaron, Amanda, and Kristina, the streetlights catch the shadows in just the right way. I am reminded of some return from a late night, after a day that had stretched forever. I associate this feeling most with being carried northward from New York City, often on the Metro-North, but sometimes in the passenger's seat of someone's car. These are moments when I felt like my life was something worth reliving. There were adventures under my belt, some of which went off well, but I couldn't be too bothered by the ones that didn't for the story of them.

I have never backpacked around Europe. It is unlikely that this will ever happen. I didn't take a semester abroad, as some of my peers did, too nervous and isolated. My sexual history is mundane after I hit 17. I have been a serial monogamist through most of my dating life, about which I felt righteous at the time, but now I find a little hollow. It's too late to change that, nor would I wish. I enjoy my relationship with Amber. Certainly far too much to go through a midlife crisis, spending my money on a sports car and getting a college-age girlfriend.

Amber and I didn't go to any drive-ins this year, partly because of the pandemic (though they are more theatrically friendly than sitting in a physical cinema) but also because a show starting after seven breaks from Amber's bedtime (she wishes to be in bed by nine sharp and will otherwise complain that she isn't). If we are out too late, it will throw off her rhythm for days, so how could it be worth doing? We did it for years, being at clubs at midnight or cozy in our cars into the second feature, but not for a while.

I want to think that there will be adventure in my future, even if it is just a late night required by an exciting day. Even if it is just from having sat in a diner too late talking with friends, something that cannot happen amid a pandemic.

If you give me any day in the future and a calendar, I can tell you with reasonable accuracy what that day will look like. My life has become a series of nested routines with small variations within. Oh, a Tuesday in April? I will go to work at 7:20, arrive at 7:30, check my work email, put away lunch, try to teach between three and nine children a watered-down version of their curriculum, have lunch from 10:50-11:30 while looking at a comedy site, resume teaching students an elective (probably Careers) until 1:51, do some grading and lesson planning before killing the rest of the time writing, come home, have one of four snacks, go for the same run around my town, return home, make Amber dinner (written on the whiteboard and planned two weeks in advance so that I am prepared for my biweekly grocery shopping) while doing dishes, watch Netflix through dinner, shower, write a bit in my nook, then go to sleep as close to 9:30 as I can manage.

If it can be forecasted, what is the point in living through the preemptive rerun? I've seen it already.

It is routine until things change. The nature of the change is uncertain, but it is inevitable that at some point things will change. It could be a positive change (new book deal) or negative (terminal disease), but either would shake things up and cause me to reevaluate my priorities.

The routines work, for the most part. I tend toward being healthier and happier. This year, there isn't much going on in late hours that I would rather be doing. No one sensible is throwing all-night keggers, not that this would be my scene.

It is disappointing that life may yield so few nocturnal surprises going forward. It will all be a matter of early bedtimes and chores on the weekends. Amber isn't likely to open a fortune cookie and proclaim that this will dictate the day's adventure. She is happy in her routines, at least in general. (She would prefer not to have to clean up after our pets so relentlessly, but it comes with the territory of pet ownership.)

We have small obligations that depend on us for food and care. We can't disappear for a weekend without making plans, getting people to agree to care for them in our stead, take over these duties to free us up to be surprised. Or we take the cats to the animal hospital to be boarded. We are owned by our pets in a sense. Without us, they would not do well. It is among the reasons that I have been pet-averse in my life, along with allergies. I wanted the freedom to do as I will. However, my wife wanted cats, and the pets needed us for their survival. Neither Kit-Kat nor Columbia, both street cats, in essence, would be living good lives if we had not taken them in. They might be dead at this point. Arthur the rat would likely have been fed to a snake. The hermit crabs would have died in some kid's closet after a week. We are their saviors and accepted the responsibility that comes with that.

It is in part the responsibility of adulthood that one comes to these sorts of schedules. We do not have parents who are going to wash our dirty clothes for us. I am responsible for making sure Amber has a nutritious and balanced meal most nights because she won't make one herself.

I know that I have a surplus of good things in my life--a wife I adore, literary acknowledgment (if not necessarily acclaim), a burgeoning friend group, a day job that pays me more than enough to live comfortably, satisfying equipment with which to write. I know too how easy it is to overlook them because things are not ideal. Things will never be ideal but still I look toward that, incremental goals toward something unreachable. I enjoy my life. I want for little. I can, on occasion, buy myself perfectly useless objects to enjoy, primarily fountain pens and spooky/occult enamel pins to better demonstrate my personality while masked.

I am comfortable, but comfort does let things slip away. I can go for hours almost an automatic, listening to a podcast while cooking, cleaning, and exercising. I mostly distance myself from these necessities, it makes them go painlessly and faster. (Listening to three comedians mock serial killers does make chores more enjoyable.) But these are hours of my life that I do not spend mindfully.

I try to explain this to Amber this night, but it is late to us and she, frustrated, says that I am speaking nonsense.

Amber is set in her ways because it makes it easier for her to do what she wishes. She has suggested that she is somewhere on the autism spectrum and that these routines help her manage. She likes how things are, and I like her to be content, and so we fall into this alliance.

It was a good night. Our friends are fantastic cooks where I would have been far less creative, the food seasoned with herbs that they had grown in their garden. Every time I hang out with Aaron and Amanda, I like them more, collectively and individually. That they included Kristina in their invite warms me further. It has been so long since I had a friend group, rather than discrete individuals that I tried to put together whenever possible, who have minor interactions. Those people never seemed to like one another, unlike the five of us.

When we arrived, she stayed in the car for an extra ten minutes, watching one of her teacher's lectures. I assured her that I would tell our friends that she was watching porn, though they suspected I might be embellishing slightly.

Surely, there is a balance between a routine and spontaneity, though we lean more heavily on the former. Amber was put out that I had planned this on a weekend where she had a test for physical chemistry (which involves quantum mechanics, a phrase I find intimidatingly intellectual), though I do run these things past her and allow her to back out as she wishes.

Amber says that she can take her car if this is a problem. She could, but that is not what I am suggesting. I don't want to be without her. That is the point. I want to have adventures with her, to build memories with her. But we can't do that if it's going to sacrifice her happiness.

last watched: Unsolved Mysteries
reading: Aleister Crowley: Magick, Rock and Roll, and the Wickedest Man in the World