Dear Lana,

I think there are two types of exes; you have your “thank u, next” exes and you have your “I Wish I Never Met You” exes (Ariana Grande and Oh Wonder, respectively). I think most of my exes are “thank u, next” exes. Not sure I could say the same for myself.

I was thinking back to what I did in the last presidential election. I spent it in a dorm of a friend I don’t talk to anymore. I think I was studying for a chemistry exam that was in a couple of days. It must’ve been November — that’s when the election is, right? At the time, it seemed like a lot of time passed between the end of high school and then. If I was being really honest, it seemed like that period in time never ended. From first semester of college to now, it doesn’t seem like much time has passed. If we can contextualize our lives in chapters, it seems like everything has been the same chapter since then.

I was scrolling through Instagram today, and I found myself bewildered by how little I cared about what I saw. Instagram’s algorithm allegedly sorts content you see based off of what some asshole data scientist thinks you want to see, but even within the first couple of posts, I found myself unattached to the content I was consuming. It struck me that I don’t really care what’s going on in the world outside of what I can see and feel and touch.

I was thinking back to my friend describing the action of “submarining” — where you interact with your friends when it is mutually convenient to do so but distance yourself at all other times. That’s a vibe. It’s a vibe I feel quite a it right now. I am a submarine, bloated metal whale, wandering in the sea, far away from others.

Siddhartha Gautama was onto something when he said that suffering is inevitable in life, but I wonder if he said anything about boredom. Life is so boring. Was it this boring in the past? Did people not experience boredom until the 20th century?