I wish I lived somewhere else

I'm 27 years old. Way too young to be confined to life in the suburbs. I should be enjoying my youth in a vibrant, metropolitan city.

Unluckily for me, I live in Washington, and lately I seem to be confined to the drudgery that is Northern Virginia. I was in D.C. on Saturday, and I realized it was only the second time I'd ventured into the District since the summer started (without just driving through). And both times were to visit this one restaurant, which is admittedly good.

But my horizons aren't exactly broad; every time I think about going to D.C., I think about all the crap I'll have to deal with. The traffic is ubiquitously bad; on Saturday, even just driving across town in the morning was fraught with peril, including surprise construction, closed-off streets and bridges, insane drivers cutting me off, etc.

Then, there's finding a parking space. My aforementioned usual restaurant has a complimentary valet lot, which saves me from having to drive around all of Northwest looking for a space. But even the simple act of attending a party in D.C., such as the Halloween party I've been invited to, fills me with a sense of dread, as I ponder driving around for half an hour frantically trying to find a place to park the car, and then walking through poorly lit neighborhoods in a city with the highest murder rate per capita.

And, if something should happen to me or my car (and I don't love challenging the relatively high odds of these crimes occuring in D.C.), I know that if I need the police, they will be characteristally unresponsive and/or retarded.

Anyway, these factors, combined with my laziness, conspire to keep me stuck in the suburbs of Northern Virginia. Blaaaaannnnnnnnd. At what point did I skip all of my late 20s and early 30s and become a suburbs-only dweller? This is bad. I'm only accelerating the onset of my mid-life crisis. Nobody wants that.