The Apartment I'm Avoiding Cleaning
I'm sitting on the couch in my very messy living room in LA, mourning my long and restful winter break. I'm supposed to be tidying up right now so that I can start the new semester with a clean slate in a couple of days. Syllabi, Google forms, and meeting agendas already sit untouched in each of my three (soon to be four, maybe even five) school-related inboxes. Why does so much of adult life involve creating new email accounts? I resent this deeply. Next to me on the couch are the "2026" balloons from New Years Eve that we've taken off the wall but still don't know what to do with. I'd suggested we save the two and the six for my roommate's next birthday, but was immediately hit with the realization that we won't still be living together then. Directly in front of me is a small easel propping up a half-painted portrait of Nori, one of my roommate's cats, that my roommate started a couple of nights ago. Strewn around it are an a...