LISTS HAVE become my worst enemy and my best friend, both for the same reason: they are just always around. Like in elementary school when the kids assigned to your shared table automatically became your ‘friends,’

the ubiquitous presence of lists in my life makes them a kind of friend by default.

Lists have been assigned to my table. There aren’

t really many others here to join us in class. I just graduated, moved to a new city to prepare for graduate school, and as of now, I know no one. I moved in to my apartment alone, put my furniture together alone, and now, I set my schedule alone.

It makes my family terribly proud of me—I regularly detect pride and astonishment in their voices. Look and see what our grand/daughter/niece is doing. She’s so unconstrained by her femaleness, so unlike the women in our generation. We set the stage for her and here she is, using power tools, taking care of things, paying bills—

and all without a man to help her out. Well, yeah. No duh. But it sure would be nice to have some help from either gender with:

It’s all little stuff, but the little stuff can feel big. My friends are scattered across the country and my boyfriend is working this summer way out on Long Island. He is two hours away and busy with a full day of work, followed by night classes. Despite this, my grandmother will still ask me if I got him to help with putting up curtains in my apartment, or assembling my furniture. I say no, I did it myself, and feel kind of bad at her resultant pride in me. It’s not that I don’t want a guy’s help, it’s that he’s far away, and I am thoroughly impatient when it comes to housework. I’m not going to sit and wait like a damsel in distress because, “I just don’t know how to use a hammer!”

Spare me such a fate.

But the questions that my grandmother asks me are indicative of a massive difference between generations. My grandmother married early, as did my mother, who married my dad before they had graduated college. They see my generation through a different lens, and all of my actions as the product of my modern preferences.

I cannot see doing things myself as a choice: now, it’s really more of a necessity. Let’s face it—a night that features sweat, blisters and six hours alone with an Ikea MALM dresser and an instruction manual is not exactly how I pictured life in the Big Apple. (I figured that I’

d at least have a bottle of wine with me.) But damn it, those pegs are not going to put themselves into that particleboard!

My screen habit is equally vexing and un-city like. Even before I moved, I was, like the majority of my generation, tethered to the Internet.

It’s that last item that’s the kicker. A new evil has entered my life, and it is called TV. I have discovered that House and NCIS are on at any time somewhere out in the cable world. Think “It’s 5:00 somewhere,” only crime shows can be more insidious than alcohol. The good news is that once you recognize the danger, you can combat it. I have found that there is nothing more motivating than realizing (with dawning horror) that you are actually contemplating wasting an hour of your life on Real ________ of ________, or America’

s Top Anything.

I sit at my desk, where my TV, laptop and iPhone are all aligned, glowing. Modern day icons, waiting on an altar and in desperate need of worship. They are a demanding pantheon, all situated close together because I have no room for a separate TV stand, or even a couch. So I lay on my bed or sit at my desk, staring at the TV screen that is the same size as my laptop screen, reading news and checking for texts and listening with the remaining portion of my brain to my nagging subconscious that screams, “STOP WATCHING BRAVO!!!!”

The reason that it even crosses my mind to watch such mindless TV in such vast amounts is that I crave voices talking to me about anything. So I escape and go to yoga class down the street where a flexible and sadistic instructor is making more ‘TO DO’ lists for me. It’

s great for the first month while I can still afford it. After this, prices go up so dramatically that even the student rates at the studio are outside my puny budget.

Moving to a new place without the comfort of friends or family can be utter desolation, no matter how exciting the city, or how many times you’

ve moved before. I grew up in the south, moved to the midwest, went to school in Boston, and lived in Europe for a year, (not in that order) but after all that, it is still achingly difficult to transition into a new life.

In addition to feeling lonely, you have to find a new grocery store, a new pharmacy, figure out where it’s safe to walk, and when it’

s okay to walk alone at night. Add to that a subway system that resembles colored spaghetti thrown on a map, a horrendous sense of direction (Compasses are useful in cities? WTF?) and things can grow distressing very quickly.

Sometimes it’s necessary to just embrace the distress and go with it; put up that 8-foot long curtain rod by yourself, run an errand without the comfort of daylight, and hammer together that furniture. The one thing I’ve learned, after many moves and more than one lonely summer is that it does get better—

day by day and list by list.