Happy birthday
I have no objections to getting older–I’ve frequently been told numerous times that my level of crotchetiness will take me a good twenty years to grow into, and I find people get more interesting as they age, anyway. So turning thirty-four the other week didn’t bother me at all.
It’s funny what makes the passage of time hit you, though. Today is my father’s and brother’s birthday. My little brother is twenty-eight, which means I appear to have been distracted since a few moments ago when he was in his bassinet (home birth–it was the 70s) and I was reading him his first story.
Also, Dad is fifty-five, and for some weird reason I don’t pretend to understand, having two parents who are now the conventional retirement age makes me feel kinda near the crest of the hill, if you know what I mean.
I may have to scale back tomorrow’s workout from the usual. Wouldn’t want to break my hip, or anything.
Anyway, happy birthday, guys.
The passage of time does hit us in strange ways. I’m just a few years your junior, but I found that the days before my 30th were the worst. My anxiety (although this is probably overstating things) at rolling the odometer hit me the hardest just a day or two before turning 30. I wonder if this isn’t the case for most guys, or maybe I’m just a softy at heart (I really doubt this).
Anyway, I have to say, the 30s have been interesting. I’m still pretty early on, but so far, I’ve found this decade the hardest in terms of figuring out how to properly socially “position” myself. I’m certainly no longer a young adult, but I’m also not a middle-ager. The 30s are strange like that. I’m sure there must be a book out there to guide me through this difficult transition…
The only thing that hit me hard about turning thirty was that friends (including Atsushi) kept joking in the days up to my birthday that they were yanking at me from the other side of the line. Maybe it’s having parents in the Baby Boomer generation and having spent my entire life being surrounded by its books, movies, pop songs, talk shows, news specials, and magazine features as it publicly teases out in obsessive detail what every new phase of life means–as if it were the first group in human history to experience this stuff–but I much prefer just to figure that aging along with your friends is an enjoyable part of life.