There is a complaint amongst millennials of the tribulations of ‘adulting’ – often mocked, usually somewhat disparaged even by other millennials. But I think there’s some legitimacy to it – adulting is hard.

Right now, I’m trying to sign over the lease to our old apartment (which requires marketing, budgeting, travel, and keeping on top of correspondence both by email and text), help set up our new place (which involves ideas about aesthetics and use of space, decision making, learning the quirks of a new building, communicating with our landlord, unpacking, and remembering what days the garbage and recycling are picked up), set up a dentist appointment, and acquire a local doctor on top of the usual tasks of housekeeping, like cooking and keeping track of whether we have groceries and cleaning and doing laundry.

But this isn’t meant to just be a laundry list of complaints – I don’t actually in any way resent doing this, because I love our new place and other things need to be done. It’s just that I recently read The Secret History of Wonder Woman and have recently started Silent Spring, and the people who were able to produce remarkable works had someone else to do the housekeeping. Because aside from just the time involved in keeping a house, the brain has to keep ticking, too – keeping track of the last of the milk and whether the laundry needs done and whether one has to get back to someone. That’s the fundamental part of adulting that takes a toll. And, outside of the house, I have a job, and am going to graduate school: I’m trying to both learn and produce things that I consider worthwhile and important.

Which is part of the reason I love living in the future. I don’t have to set an alarm on weekdays: my phone does that automatically. I’ve recently started making profligate use of both Instacart and Amazon’s Subscribe and Save: my time grocery shopping can instead be spent on class reading, and I have no need to remember to keep track of how much Ensure we have left for breakfasts, because starting next month it will arrive without me having to think about it. The joys of paying for a problem to go away are now available even on a graduate student’s stipend (well, and Tristan’s paycheck).

My utility payments are automatic, my rent is paid online, and I can order groceries on an app. Next up, when money permits: a goddamn robot vacuum so I don’t have to think about cleaning the floors.

And now, back to the 54 things on my to do list.