I'm almost ashamed in some ways to admit that I've never lived alone. Yes, I have my own bedroom and have not shared a bedroom with a roommate since my freshman year of college, but I've never lived in my own apartment. It's not because I couldn't handle it on my own -- please, you honestly think he of the cleaning frenzies, he who is so organized that he's still perturbed that his Quicken finance program is 2 cents off from what his Mastercard balance says, he who has never bounced a check in his life and has barely ever paid bills late would be unable to handle living on his own? A good chunk of the reason is economics. For me to live in a neighborhood like I'm living and have the things I have in my apartment that I like having (DirecTV with every single damn channel known to man, DSL, etc.), it would be too much for me to afford on my own. Hell, even rent would be a little steep. Also, it's sometimes nice to have someone else around, y'know? Other people in the apartment is a good thing to have, you can socialize every now and then and it's kind of like a built-in social outlet. Admittedly, I was a lot more social with my roommates when I first moved in and one of them was not dating anyone, but we still go out every now and then. But for some reason, lately I've been thinking about my own place. Just a place that's mine, y'know? A place where I can home and not worry about the roommates being there if I just want to crash with my bedroom door open or whether one of them's asleep so I won't be able to reset the DSL modem when it drops the connection or whether someone was watching TV so the TiVo didn't tape my program that I wanted to see or whether I wanted to watch TV in the living room and eat alone but someone else is there and all sprawled out on the couch watching something else. For now, I'm happy to be living here, and I'm happy that I get along with my roommates -- believe me, I've had some Roommates From Hell -- and so I'll continue to live here contentedly until they decide they want to move in with their girlfriends and we all go our separate ways. But I'm still saving up for that apartment that's mine, all mine.