I was at happy hour with a bunch of colleagues a few nights ago, and one of them, who is only 25, has been in the same relationship for the last three years. Her boyfriend is three years older, and at an age where a lot of his friends are getting engaged and married, so she feels like he is going in a similar direction mindset-wise, as well. She expressed some frustration around this.

“I’m so bored, Yvonne,” she said to me, two drinks in, resting her head on my shoulder. Yep, this was the truth coming out. Alcohol always does this to you. “I’m still young. I don’t want to be ‘settled.’ Everything is always the same with us. It’s soooo boring.”

I had to hold back what I wanted to say, as I’m definitely not going to be someone chiming   in to potentially break up a long-term relationship. All I said to her was that I spent almost all of my 20s in long-term relationships, and if I had to, I probably would have done it differently, especially my college years and early 20s. I obviously can’t redo it now, but if I could, I would have been single then and not settled. I told her she had to pick her own path and decide what was right for her.

Well, today marks two years since our wedding. And as always, Chris is annoying me, but as such, still eliciting emotions from me. For once in a long time, I kind of feel like almost everything in life feels good, from work to friends to my relationship. This type of “settled” I can definitely get behind.

When people talk about marriage, it’s usually in a very positive or a negative light. For those who are uninitiated and ignorant and young, they think it’ll be happily ever after (certainly helped by the Disney fairy tales that overrun the minds of young children), riding off into the sunset on a horse that doesn’t smell. For those who have either experienced it themselves or through the dismal relationships of their parents, they avoid it, have heart palpitations over it, and think all marriages will be doomed. Some will just mask their lack of joys more than others. “All the world’s a stage,” as Shakespeare once wrote.

I tend to think more practically about it now. When you’re married, by default you have someone to do activities with. You don’t have to plan a trip and feel self conscious about traveling alone or get lonely pangs. Your partner will be there with you. My parents’ marriage isn’t necessarily the happiest one, but it makes sense. They take care of each other. My dad does all the things my mom doesn’t like to do, and my mom does most of the things my dad doesn’t like to do or isn’t capable of doing. They once had a fervid, romantic love. That’s pretty much disintegrated now, and now it’s about a stability, regularity, the expected. But there’s an inherent trust that they have in each other after all these years. And then, there are those like Hal & Bee, who just fantasize endlessly about killing each other in multiple ways, whether it’s via stabbing, shooting, or just beating to death.

Maybe I’m naive myself. But I cannot fathom the idea of fantasizing about killing my partner in different ways and actually deriving joy from it. The mere idea doesn’t sound very exciting, and I guess I’ve never had a desire to end anyone’s life, even when extremely angry. If you really hate someone so much that you want to fantasize about killing him, then why don’t you just leave him? Or is it the regularity and stability and the perception of being “status quo” by being married that keeps you together?

Although it is more acceptable to get a divorce today than it was 50-60 years ago, I think it’s still fair to say that it’s not something that people look upon favorably. After all, it is a “failure” in life, right? It’s a failure at marriage, a life commitment and vow you made to someone, and thus the end of your shared life together with this other person. It’s still something that people say in hushed voices.

I think it probably helps that people are gradually getting married older, but that’s not a safe guard from divorce, either. I just learned of a colleague in another office who got divorced (for the second time) after her marriage, which lasted only five months. Her then-husband, after marriage, suddenly started imposing gendered responsibilities on her, and even became abusive. It’s terrifying to think that people could change overnight just because a piece of paper was signed and a ceremony ending with a kiss was held.

Maybe nothing is safe anymore — being single or being married. You’re bound to get hurt and betrayed.

I was at happy hour this early evening with five of my colleagues. We’d been trying to organize a team happy hour for ages, but given how flaky New Yorkers generally are, it never really worked out until tonight, and even tonight, we only achieved a turnout of six people.

My colleague who has been the least liked given his messy desk area and bad manners was complaining about his roommate, who we found out tonight has five girlfriends. This guy has supposedly made it clear to each of these women that he is not exclusively seeing any of them, but none of them explicitly know that he’s seeing four other women. He said his friend doesn’t believe in exclusive relationships and doesn’t want to just see one person. Everyone else in the group laughed and passed judgment. My colleague himself said he thought the guy was an asshole, but also admitted that the women probably had low self esteem given that they put up with him and his antics.

Honestly, I don’t really see the problem if the guy is being explicitly clear to all of them that he’s not being exclusive. In that case, there’s no deception. He’s actually being honest and true to himself. It’s their choice to continue seeing him, and it seems that they have no problem seeing him knowing that he’s probably screwing other women. I don’t think that human beings are naturally wired to be monogamous, and I really think it’s something that society has forced upon people. What is it to someone else if this guy has five or ten girlfriends? Who cares if you have two different people you’re having sex with? How does it really affect anyone else’s life? Having strict rules about what is acceptable and not is what makes people fail.

In light of my cancelled work trip, I spent the day working at home, shifting between my dining table and the couch, under my blanket and outside of it. The snow was steadily falling from very early this morning until now. We’re currently almost at 9am and the snow really has not stopped for even a little bit.

I looked down at the ground and saw the white sticking everywhere, and it just made me feel so miserable. I want milk for my tea and Weetbix, but I have zero desire to deal with the sludge and mess that is outside. I do not understand how anyone can get excited by this.

“Snow is awesome,” my colleague said when I told him that I hate snow days. “Yes, snow is awesome,” I responded back. “It’s awesome when I am inside, in my warm apartment, under a blanket drinking a hot drink, watching the snow fall on the OUTSIDE.”

And outside of Manhattan, if I lived in a real house, I cannot even begin to fathom how awful it would be to shovel snow, deal with snow tires and chains, and ice everywhere. That sounds like the most miserable first world life possible. These are the moments when I wished I lived in Southern California and was completely ignorant of this cold misery.

Just when I had a trip to Boston planned for the next three days, Mother Nature decides that my plans are completely irrelevant, and all flights and trains get cancelled… which led to my calling the airlines and the hotel to get my refunds. What joy. And as I am writing this, I have one colleague who is stuck overnight in Toronto due to a cancelled flight (and will not be home until tomorrow night, earliest, and that’s being optimistic), a second colleague who was scheduled to come home from Chicago tonight and his direct flight got cancelled, forcing him to take a connecting flight through D.C. into Newark late tonight. Then, a third colleague is taking a flight to Albany and renting a car to drive him 2.5 hours away. That’s how desperate he was to get home. And, he didn’t have a change of clothes, which probably made him want to go home even more.

This is always something that seems comical and absurd to people who have never lived in snowy areas. Whenever we share this information about meeting cancellations, trip interruptions, and flights getting diverted due to weather, my California colleagues always laugh and think it’s so funny and insane. Yes, it’s funny… when you don’t have to deal with it and have no concept of it ever happening to you.

As one of my colleagues has recently said, San Francisco is having an identity crisis. It wants to be this progressive, hippie place where all are welcome, but we all know that given the cost of living there and now that rent has sky rocketed to level far beyond what Manhattan, it is not welcome to all. And to make matters worse, my dad is reading all kinds of articles that are illuminating on exactly how bad it’s gotten: the level of home and car thefts which have exponentially gone up in recent years, the homeless tents that are set up throughout the entire city, sparing not a single neighborhood, and the worst part? People are actually using their web development skills to build mobile apps now that track where human feces are across the city so that you can either avoid taking a leisurely walk with your dog in that particular area, or remove that from your running path.

When there is an app that tracks where homeless people are literally shitting on your streets, that is truly when you know that your city is going down, down, and down.

My friend, in honor of his 40th birthday, rented out a small theater in the Lincoln Center this evening to showcase all of the films he’s produced. Film production is a side project of his, and to date, he’s produced about six different films. Some are as short as nine minutes long, but the latest one that he’s produced is his longest, and I would say his best. It’s a documentary called Refugee, which is about the Syrian refugee crisis across Europe. It follows a Syrian family as they get separated repeatedly during their process to gain legal status in Germany, and it also showcases the conditions of the refugee camps across multiple European borders.

It was a tragic and eye-opening documentary; I’ve read a lot about the crisis, but the visuals are obviously impactful. It’s hard to imagine someone watching this and not being moved by it. While I was watching it, I wondered for all the people who are not for opening their borders and for all the people who are anti welcoming Syrian refugees into their countries… if they watched this and actually saw the disgusting state of the refugee camps and heard the horrific stories of the people who have gone through them and still sit every day waiting for news, if they would change their mind, if just a little. The lives of these people are literally on hold: they cannot work, the children cannot go to school and learn. They’re just waiting for a new life that they may not even get. And most of them just want to die because of how awful their conditions are. I can imagine that many of them will grow up to be resentful of the harsh conditions they had to endure, and of all the people around the western world who didn’t want to give them kindness when they truly needed it most. It is heartbreaking, and for me, it just feels embarrassing as an American citizen.