Hey Rockstars,

I hope you all are having a great day. I managed to question my entire existence and then land in the same spot 24 hours later.

Last night, it started with a question: had I become boring? This was not prompted by anything especially dramatic. It was actually prompted by a song (which I’ll post about later this week—maybe even tomorrow). But I had simply started noticing the sameness of my days. I go to the same coffee shops, the same stores, usually go to a happy hour or something after work, and spend most of my other evenings at home. I travel for work conferences, but I cannot remember the last time I spontaneously booked a trip somewhere just because I wanted to see it. There are parts of my apartment that could charitably be described as “lived in” and less charitably be described as “Sandhya, please unpack these boxes, you moved in ages ago.”

I have my routines. I like my routines.

But suddenly I started wondering: at what point does a routine become a rut?

Then my friend Washiq accidentally sent me into an existential crisis. We were talking about life when he asked me, “When was the last time you were out all night with someone?”

“All night?” I asked. “Never.”

He was horrified.

“SMH. You are wasting away your youth. I think I just identified something to try for your next Check-In.”

I asked where, exactly, I was supposed to spend this hypothetical all-nighter.

“Wherever your heart desires,” he said. He suggested New York, naturally—the classic city that never sleeps—and then casually expanded the list to Tokyo, London, Dubai, Mumbai, and Seoul, as though the only thing standing between me and an all-night adventure across the globe was a troubling lack of imagination.

And because apparently I was in precisely the mood to allow someone else’s offhand observation to become a referendum on my entire existence, I told him that I felt like I had become really boring. “I don’t really go anywhere or do anything,” I said.

“Well, you’ve always been a bit introverted.”

This should have been my first clue that Washiq and I were perhaps working from slightly different definitions of me. Me? Introverted? A shy extrovert, yes. But not a full-on introvert. If anything, I collect introvert friends like little treasures.

But it didn’t matter because I was already in my head.

“Sometimes we just get into a rut and need a little push to get out of it,” he said.

And suddenly there it was. A rut.

The word bothered me much more than I expected. Was I in a rut? Had my world gotten smaller without me noticing?

Should I be traveling more? Going out more? Exploring new neighborhoods? Trying new restaurants? Staying out until sunrise with fascinating strangers in cities that never sleep?

Was I wasting my youth? Was I—perhaps the most devastating possibility of all—a boring 31-year-old? By the end of this completely reasonable and measured thought process, and without jumping to any dramatic conclusions whatsoever, I had progressed to asking Washiq: wait, if I was in a rut and didn’t feel like doing anything, was I actually depressed?

“Nah,” he told me. “You’re too cute to be depressed.”

“I’ll take it,” I said.

For the record, this is not how depression works. But the larger question stayed with me.

There is a version of adulthood that we are constantly being encouraged to pursue. Go somewhere new; try something new; say yes; book the flight; take the risk; stay out late; collect experiences; make memories; sleep when you’re dead.

And I understand the appeal of it. I even believe in some of it. In fact, I do a lot of it. Somehow, though, all evidence to the contrary disappeared during my freakout over the fact that I had never spent an entire night out. I never want my life to become so comfortable that I stop being curious about the world outside of it.

But somewhere along the way, I think I started confusing novelty with aliveness.

So today, partially because I had been thinking about all of this and partially because I simply wanted to get out of the house, I drove to Longwood Gardens. You all know that Longwood is one of my favorite places on earth. I have been there many times. There was nothing particularly adventurous about choosing it. I knew exactly where I was going, what I would find when I got there, and approximately how happy it would make me. Also ever since I became a member, my tickets are freeeee!! How can I resist?!

And almost immediately, I realized I had taken Washiq’s advice much more literally than he probably intended.

As it turned out, Washiq was right about one thing: I did need a little push. He was just deeply mistaken about the direction in which I needed to be pushed.

His version involved New York until sunrise. Mine involved Longwood Gardens before sunset.

Because staying out all night has never particularly appealed to me. Not at 21. Not at 25. Not now.

Even in the most energetic, adventurous, socially booked version of my life, sunrise has never struck me as an appropriate cue to start considering whether I should go home. Maybe with exactly the right person, on exactly the right night, I could happily stay out drinking until two in the morning. But even that is a highly selective operation.

Apparently I had been evaluating my current life against a standard I had never wanted to meet in the first place. More importantly, as I wandered around Longwood, another thought occurred to me:

I am not actually in a rut. I am tired.

There is a difference.

My life is extraordinarily full right now. I work a demanding job. I am in business school. I write. I volunteer. I serve on boards and committees and somehow continue agreeing to things because apparently I have never met an extracurricular activity I couldn’t convince myself I had room for. I make plans with people I love. I have projects I care about. I am constantly thinking about the next thing I need to do.

Do I party all night? Absolutely not. Do I go to a restaurant with my friends on a Friday night, take five shots of tequila, and then close the restaurant down? Yes, of course.

God forbid a girl wants to rest.

At some point, without realizing it, I had started treating rest as evidence that I wasn’t living enough. That seems like a particularly cruel way to think about a life. There is no prize at the end of adulthood for accumulating the highest number of novel experiences.

Sometimes familiarity is not stagnation. Sometimes familiarity is love.

That was what Longwood reminded me. I know that place. I love that place. I know the conservatories and the fountains and the gardens and the feeling I get when I am walking through them. Going back did not feel like repeating something I had already done.

It felt like returning to myself. I sat on a bench at Longwood, watched the fountains, journaled, and let the wind blow through my hair. I put on my headphones and listened to peppy Bollywood music, and I felt full.

And because the universe occasionally enjoys making a point with all the subtlety of a children’s television show, I also spontaneously saw my friend Divya today. So there I was, on the day I had decided I needed to “get out of my rut,” wandering through one of my favorite places on earth and unexpectedly seeing one of my favorite people.

I had a wonderful day. Not because I became someone different. Because I remembered that I already like being me.

I still think there was something useful hidden inside my miniature existential crisis, though.

Routine and rut are not the same thing. A routine is something you return to because it supports your life; a rut is something you remain inside because you have forgotten that you can choose otherwise.

And I think the difference is whether you’re still choosing the things you’re doing: Do I go to the same coffee shop because I love the coffee or the vibes, or because it has stopped occurring to me that I could go anywhere else? Do I stay home tonight because I genuinely want a quiet evening, or because leaving the house feels like too much effort? Do I want a trip somewhere new, or do I think I should want one because an interesting person is supposed to have a passport full of stamps and a collection of stories that begin, “So there I was in Tokyo at four in the morning…”?

Those are different questions.

Maybe getting out of a rut doesn’t always require going somewhere new. Sometimes you just need to go back to the places that remind you who you are.

And of course, I still want to explore and travel. I still want new experiences. I want to surprise myself. I hope there are dozens of cities and restaurants and experiences and people waiting somewhere in my future that I cannot possibly imagine yet.

But I no longer think I need to manufacture adventure because I am afraid that contentment looks boring from the outside. I don’t need to stay out until sunrise to prove that I am using my life correctly. Sometimes I may want an adventure; most of the time, I want Longwood Gardens. And sometimes, after an extremely busy week, I may want to sit in my house and do absolutely nothing.

That isn’t wasting my youth; that’s just Sunday.

Until next time!

xo

Sandhya

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