seanbonner: Status: 30

January 24, 2005

Status: 30 I turn 30 one month from today. I've kind of been freaking out about this birthday for a while now but I haven't really been able to put my finger on why. It's not the "getting old" thing - that's never bothered me and I don't really think 30 is that old. I might worry about "getting old" when I turn 50, so this concern over 30 is something else. Last night I think I realized, at least in part, what it's all about.

It's hard to describe but if you think of a RPG video game like, I dunno, Legend of Zelda or something. You have to run around and do all these things and collect all these items to pass to the next level. Sometimes you can pass to the next level but if you don't have everything you need then you come to a point where you can't go any further and you have to go back and get whatever it is you missed. I see 30 as very much a milestone like moving onto the next level and I'm freaking out because I don't know if I did everything I was supposed to do by this point.

Unfortunately there's no cheat codes or websites with the secret info to go look up so I'm pretty much winging it which is I think where the fear is coming from. So, what is a guy to do? Well, I could go on and on about this for ever and never know if I got everything right so what is the point, right? So instead, I've decided that I'm going to use the next month to take a look at what got me to this point. Or rather, the definitive points where something happened that could have very easily gone a very different direction and I'd be in a very different place today.

You know what I'm talking about right? Those weird moments in life when you always left work at 5PM but this one day you had to work late and left at 6PM and met your wife on the way home or something. Those specific things that could have changed everything had they played out a little differently. I've got a bunch of these stories and I'm going to try to think and write about them over the next month.

Links to stories: Winter 1985 | Fall 1991.

Posted by sean on January 24, 2005 03:32 PM | View blog reactions
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Comments

Dude, I just turned 35. When you turn 35, you stop looking for the Legend of Zelda cheat codes and start looking for the Mortal Kombat blood codes. J/K.

30 (or 35) is just a number. On Sunday, Sue pointed out that everyone else at the skatepark was 1/3 my age. The older I get, the more I want to simplify...sell the house, work fewer hours, etc.

Milestones are an illusion. You can pursue the unattainable endlessly, but you have done a lot of really great things in 30 years. Don't sell yourself short. Enjoy the ride.

Posted by: Brent on January 25, 2005 07:22 AM

I'm so glad to be out of my 20s, it's not even funny. 30 is awesome. i don't feel like i have to be a certain way and i don't care about labels or following a crowd. i don't live my life by societal milestones so i don't care about the things i haven't done that society thinks i should have done by now. life is good. i'm doing what i want, finally. i'm really looking forward to 50 because that is when i will have lots of good stories to tell that don't involve alcohol or sex in some way.

Posted by: Raspil on January 25, 2005 10:59 AM

31 is my favorite year so far. i hardly worry about anything, and almost everything is rad. welcome!

Posted by: charges on January 25, 2005 01:17 PM

At age 48, I gotta tell ya, I am so much smarter than I ever was. And, it's all becasue of those specific things you're talking about. Some of which, at the time, seemed like they could set a person back a lifetime (or more). Those are the things that can make us smarter and better.

Posted by: Marie C. on January 26, 2005 09:48 AM

You are in a superb place right now: old enough to have amassed a number of interesting experiences and achievements; smart enough to know it's time to start reflecting on them instead of just collecting more for collection's sake.

Don't know if you read Evelyn Rodriguez, but she's a great amalgam of left brain/right brain and therefore really good for helping to focus one's thoughts on these types of things. She had a great post recently that touches on some of what you're going through. She's been reading Eric Liu's new book, _Guiding Lights_, which is very much about the author's search for meaning:

"When I conceived this book, I had spent a decade on a fast track of career achievement, collecting one shiny merit badge after another. Youngest this. First that. But slowly and insiduously, the badges, rather than the way they were earned, became the point - and once that happened, the joy of doing was replaced by the imperative of achieving. My hunger for the next great resume line - and my anxiety that the wave would evaporate beneath me - was warping my sense of what mattered. I could see that. And I sensed that this book, and the journey it would require, would re-center me. I had no idea how but I had an instinct that it was time to search. Of course, as this search had unfolded, I've been hounded by the fear that inner peace, if it arrives, will neuter me and drain me of ambition."

Full post is at: http://evelynrodriguez.typepad.com/crossroads_dispatches/2005/01/to_spectate_or__4.html

I think your idea of pondering the turns is as good an entry point as any to the Truth. I would only add that perhaps it might be good to let your thoughts take you where they will--even if it's to other methods of reflection--in the same way you've already recognized that life takes odd but useful turns.

It'll be interesting to see where all this reflection takes you. I hope you keep posting about it.

Posted by: Colleen on January 27, 2005 06:33 PM