For the most part, I’m happy. Both momentarily and in general. I have a nice apartment and a good living situation. I have a job that I enjoy. I have awesome friends and interesting ways to spend my time—singing in the chorus, playing on my office softball team, probably doing another half-marathon in the fall, and possibly doing an open-water swim. I’m planning on taking some trips this summer as well—NYC next weekend, California in July, DC in August, and San Francisco in September, plus a weeklong business trip to Dallas. Nothing in my life right now is actually terrible.

But here’s what’s been bugging me for the better part of the last six months or so:  I am ready to be done with this stage of my life. The single-in-the-city stage. The spending-weekends-out-with-girlfriends stage. The cycling-through-dating-sites stage.

I’m done with it. Or, at least, I really, really want to be.

I wrote a few months ago about how scared I am of notgetting the things I want the most. Nothing has changed since I wrote that, except that even more now, to quote Veruca Salt, I want it noooooooowwww!

I’m tired of having to check OKCupid or Match or eHarmony every day when I come home. I’m tired of going on awful dates that leave me checking my watch to figure out how long I have to suffer through the rest of it. I’m tired of wondering if all the good guys out there really are taken or gay, if there was some chance years ago that I should have taken and didn’t, if I’m too picky or if I could really be happy by lowering my standards, why there are people who are so much fill-in-the-blank-er than me who have managed to attract guys and find loving relationships when I haven’t. I’m tired of seeing cute babies everywhere I go and wondering how many years my eggs have until they dry up. (Cue the Marisa Tomei foot-stomp.)

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7J-2EIvItVY]

Nothing original there, I know. Most single people probably think all of those things. But one thing has changed recently: I am really freaking sick of the city.

This is a change because, although I love Boston (and its surrounding areas, like Cambridge/Somerville, where I currently live), I’ve always seen it as my temporary home. None of the apartments I’ve lived in have ever quite felt like home—they just feel too ephemeral. Until I actually own a house that I can furnish and decorate myself, I don’t think I’m going to feel that way about any place.

I don’t want to be constantly surrounded by people, bumping into people everywhere I go. I don’t want to have to rely on the T to get anywhere. I don’t want to have to walk everywhere- and therefore have to get nauseated from cigarette smoke everywhere I go. I want to be able to step out my back door and not be ridiculously close to every other house around me, and not to have my next-door-neighbor’s creepy fake owl staring at me while I try to read on the back porch.

I don’t want to have to depend on having single friends for nights out. I don’t want weekends to revolve around going out and trying new restaurants or bars. I’d rather come home and find my significant other there and know that we can spend the whole night watching bad reality shows together.

I want to be able to drive in places where I’m unlikely to run into much traffic. I want to be guaranteed a parking space when I drive, and know that I won’t have to parallel park to find it.

I know the suburbs aren’t for everyone. They certainly aren’t cool, but neither am I. For me, there’s an element of permanence to it that appeals to me. I want to worry about lawn mowing instead of cover charges, paint samples instead of Craigslist roommates, finding a baby-sitter instead of finding a date.

If I could live there now, I would. But I don’t have a car, which I’d at least need to get to and from the commuter rail. I certainly don’t have enough money to buy a place, although I could rent. But there’s also the matter of depending on friends for my social life, and said friends being in the city.

I am lucky to still have friends who are single, but that won’t last forever. And I am so scared that they’ll eventually get married, have kids, buy houses, and have more important things to worry about than when to hang out with their friends—and I won’t. I’m scared that something bad will happen to me– losing a job, a death in the family, some kind of serious illness– and I won’t have anyone to lean on.

I don’t want to be left behind.

But I’m sure as hell ready to leave all this behind.

A year ago, I blogged about how I moved past hating Valentine’s Day. At this point, I actually kind of like it because it gives me an excuse to spoil myself—and as an introvert, I have always enjoyed the pleasure of my own company, so I take whatever excuses I can. But as I’m another year older and single for another year, I have to admit that I’m reflecting on some things.

Now, before I say anything more, I want to note that this is not a woe-is-me-I’m-single post. It’s not an OMG-my-significant-other-RAWKS! post, either. (By the way, those two things are equally annoying, so basically, everyone should just shut up about their relationship statuses.) But it is a musing on getting older and how I find myself looking at the future differently in my late twenties than I did in my early twenties.

You notice my bucket list here? Lots of fun stuff on it—skydiving, mountain climbing, and some stuff that isn’t in a Tim McGraw song, like owning a boat, recording a song, and being a bestselling author. I also have my list of travel goals that I hope to make some progress on over the next couple of years.

But the truth is, I would give up every other item on both of those lists if it meant that I could have only these three:

• Fall in love with an awesome guy who loves me back, have a wonderful wedding, and stay happily married for the rest of our lives
• Have at least two kids
• Own a house in the Boston suburbs

That’s it. Those are the things I want the most out of life. They are not extraordinary things. They’re things that millions of people manage to do without much trouble. And yet, for me, they might be the hardest items on my bucket list to accomplish. Let’s take a look at them.

Not only have I never been in a relationship, I have never been in love. So my heart has never been broken, but I also do not know what romantic love feels like. And as easy as it is to get cynical and think that real love doesn’t exist or that all relationships will end, I know that’s not true. I know people who are really, truly in love and will be together for the rest of their lives. And I always think of my paternal grandparents, who lived through the Great Depression and World War II and who were happily married for sixty-six years until my grandfather’s death. Real love happens, but it has never happened to me, and more than anything, I want to find someone with whom to spend every day for the rest of my life.

I also want at least two kids. The challenge here is accomplishing the part before that, love and marriage, in time to make that happen. It’s very hard to get pregnant without fertility treatments after age thirty-five or so. If I met a guy tomorrow, I’d have to date him for at least two years before I’d consider getting engaged. Then we’d be engaged for about another year and have at least a year or two of being married and childless before having our first kid, which would make me a first-time mother at about age thirty-two. Which is fine, but remember, this would be the absolute earliest. I’d consider adoption in the future as well, but even if I were to adopt, I wouldn’t want to be too old when becoming a parent.

The side effect of wanting kids so badly is that it has made me pickier about whom I’m attracted to. When I look at dating sites, I end up thinking things like, “Is his career stable? Does he seem mature enough to be a good father? Does he value the same kinds of things that I do?” I just feel like I can’t waste time with someone if I can’t see a long-term future with him.

The other reason I want to find someone who is mature and financially stable is because of the third thing I want: owning a house in the Boston suburbs. Specifically, a house that is on enough land to be more private than living in the city and has at least three bedrooms and a backyard. And a house that is located in a Boston suburb that is on the commuter rail and has a good school system. And, the hardest part, a house that my hypothetical future husband and I can afford.

Now, I am pretty good at saving money. Despite paying a lot in rent and earning the first word of my blog title by working in a not-so-lucrative industry, I have managed to save a decent amount. And one of the reasons I was so excited to become a sales rep was because if I make my number, I get a much bigger bonus than I used to get. But even so, the Boston suburbs are ridiculously expensive, even if you’re just looking for a modest three-bedroom house, and it will take me a long time to save enough money for a down payment. What if I can’t meet a guy who can afford to help me buy a house?

What do you guys think? Have you found your priorities changing as you get older? What do you want the most out of life, and do you worry about how you may never achieve it?