Is it really 2022 already? Covid years are like dog years: blink and they’re over, washed away in a slow-moving flood that feels less like a disaster movie now and more like a scam—like a hotel that looks nothing like the pictures on the website. I want my money back. No, forget that—I want my time back!

It occurred to me on Christmas Eve that a year earlier, as we collectively approached the end of “the worst year ever,” we felt like something was coming to an end, even though I think we all knew it wasn’t. It was cold, and Christmas parties weren’t so much a destination as a landmark, something to signal that 2020 would be consigned to history in just a few days.

And then there was midnight on December 31st. Wherever you were in the world, you surely breathed a sigh of relief. 2020 was over, and while 2021 probably wouldn’t be much better, at least it wouldn’t be 2020, and that counted for something.

But for me, 2021 was just… well, boring. Nothing happened. I didn’t travel anywhere aside from a seven-day vacation in Portugal, which felt like seven days plucked from the pages of a travel brochure from back when travel agents actually had brochures. Make no mistake, I was grateful for that opportunity to escape the “routine of routine,” but it lacked the hectic nature of an open-ended adventure, meeting locals on Couchsurfing and heading off on the road with no real idea where I’d find myself the next day.

In 2021, nothing was new. Each day felt more or less like the one before it; I even started to recognize strangers. I purchased plants and cultivated them to the point where people complimented me, bought pasta bowls for their interesting shape, and even repainted the apartment. My routines became roots, and all the while I longed to rip them up, gift the plants to friends, and leave those nice white pasta bowls behind for the allure of a dusty road and something new.

It’s funny, because I look back at 2020 now and find it was interesting in its own way, simply because we were all thrown into unfamiliar situations. Quarantines, Zoom parties, Tiger King (I only watched episode one because, seriously, why was that a thing?), and clapping out of the window at 8 PM. We were “together alone,” and while it was frightening and uncertain, it was also unifying and novel.

I remember pushing the bed against the wall and laying a towel on the floor as the sun streamed through the full-length windows, warming my home-bound bones. It was a new way to sunbathe, but I made the most of it. I found a recording of a Gold Coast beach with the sound of lapping waves and the gentle beat of a distant radio. I closed my eyes and let myself travel there, eventually moving across the room as the shadows chased me into a corner. That was fun, and I got a fairly decent tan, too!

I went on solo bike rides to places I wouldn’t have thought to explore before. I found new favorite spots, including a couple of old chateaux where I could lie in the sun amid manicured hedges. I stretched the possibilities of the restrictions and pushed the boundaries of… well, boundaries.

Now here I am, looking back on 2020 with a strange kind of affection—like school days, when all we wanted was to get out into the world and no longer be held back by an education. It sucked, there’s no doubt about it, but at least there was novelty in the calamity. 2021, however, felt like a strangely un-canceled season of a daytime soap opera that nobody watches anymore.

I’m bored with this. Bored of masks, variants, vaccines, and anti-vaxxers. Bored of not being able to hug people or go anywhere without having someone scan a code on my phone with an app that will almost certainly become problematic soon enough. I’m bored of hearing politicians talk about this crisis and the money they’re willing to spend to defeat it, while they do as little as possible to address the climate crisis, which has been around longer and will be far worse in the long run. 2021 was worse than 2020 because it was an insufferable bore.

So, I’m heading off to America in a few weeks. While it won’t be a motorbike trip on an unfamiliar road, it will be a change of scenery. In fact, it’s a trip that retraces my first steps into international travel; I’ll be touching down in the USA thirty years to the day after I first stepped off a plane into the California sun.

I’m looking forward to seeing those familiar faces once more and taking the Amtrak over the Rocky Mountains to Colorado. Of course, we’re living in uncertain times, so I’m not entirely convinced something won’t happen to scupper those plans. We’ll see, I guess. But for now, I’m happy to see the end of 2021, the most boring year of my life. 2022 started with a sunny day—and you know what? I’d call that a good start.