The View From Thirty
I turned 30, last month. It was my first time.
Thirty seems more significant than all my past age milestones. Sure, 16 was big, because I finally had a license to drive home the fact that my parents wouldn’t let me drive. And at 18, of course, playing with matches became a felony. That was hard. But at 30, I think I have finally lived long enough to have a little perspective on life.
I’ve realized that age makes you boring. When I was 23 I was deep. I wrote poetry with no punctuation about loneliness and had soul-searching conversations in smoky coffee shops about the human spirit and what it would take to change the world.
Now, at 30, I spend my time wondering why the sprinkler system keeps breaking. I write emails with bad punctuation about application deployments and have mind-numbing conversations in brightly-lit conference rooms about human resources and what it would take to change our processes.
October 20th, 2005 at 9:45 am
Personally, I think I like my 33 yr old self a lot more than my 23yr old self.
However, I’ve become “boring”, too. Instead of talking about which club(s) we’re going to tonight, we’re sitting around talking about how Cape Cod houses are what we’re looking for… with as little or no neighborhood association as possible…. with a garage on the side - not front - of the house… mmm mortgage payments which are less than 1/2 of the market rate of rent on the apartment we’re in. Then, I’ll actually have the money for all of the geekery I’ve been dreaming of… Oh, and I can finally go back and ski the Rockies at least a few more times before the arthritis sets in.
October 20th, 2005 at 11:12 pm
Hey man,
Could be worse, I spend my time talking to 18-21 year olds who want to pretend to play government but really have no clue what they are doing. The adults in the room frankly think that they should be babysat by the student body president who manages to intimidate people twice his age by merely knowing how to talk in a meeting run by roberts rules of order. I get to try to deal with a 1.1 million dollar budget while trying to simultaneously not offend people who are just too stupid to find their feet with a map and a flashlight and are so easily offended that if I say that its a dark night, they think I’m making a comment about how dark skin is really just a sign of cain’s curse. On the other hand, I volunteered for this job, so I guess I really can’t complain. Oh well. suicide it is.
You ARE alive! –Ed.
October 26th, 2005 at 8:05 am
What Claire doesn’t realize is that all the spare cash she can free up through buying a house will be sucked up by her sprinkler system.
You’re not old until you start making plans based on “How many more years do I have to work?”.
Clair’s gonna be more concerned that you think he’s a she.
–sf.
October 29th, 2005 at 5:39 pm
That’s funny, right there. I don’t care who you are.
I’ll let the grass die before I run up a huge water bill. I have no compassion for the grass roots.
And I’ve been asking myself how many years for the past 5 or 6.
We also found one. Buying this house has already been quite a bit less daunting. I dunno if it’s because I’ve already been through this process before or if it is because the house is in the suburbs and significantly less than my condo in the city.
Why am I rambling on about this here instead of my own blog?