This summer marks two years since I moved into my apartment. Moving wasn’t something I had planned on doing until about 4 months beforehand.

This move meant living by myself for the first time, and little did I know it would mean many more first time experiences.

Some of those new experiences included new worries: I found myself feeling stressed about finances, anxious about my health, and overwhelmed by responsibilities and decisions in ways I hadn’t before.

How do I change my view of singleness to stop seeing it as less than marriage?

This is a question I wish I had known the answer to about 7 years ago: I was 24 and coming to realize that my singleness was stealing my joy. Or rather, that I was allowing discontentment about my singleness to take root in my heart.

And when discontentment is the root, joy won’t be the fruit.

​I live by myself in a small apartment, so a large part of my time is spent alone. Cooking and eating meals, washing dishes, grocery shopping, working on my budget, watching a show, going for a walk, making a craft—most days, I’m doing all of this solo.

And that’s true for many single people.

Navigating the day-in and day-out of life as a single person can burdensome. And let’s be honest, it can also be boring. Doing all the mundane, grown-up things by ourselves--what’s the fun in that?

One evening, my sister and I went to dinner with some friends. During our chatting and catching up, my sister shared with our friends that she’d gone on a few dates with someone.

Our friends were excited for her and began asking her questions, interested to hear about how she’d met this date, what this person was like, and how things were going.

After several minutes, they turned to me and asked, “Anything new with you?”