... 30 ...

To commemorate the 10^th anniversary of Facebook, the website launched a retrospective “Look Back” feature.  Being a sucker for nostalgia, I’ve watched every one that’s popped up on my feed.  I don’t want to say they triggered an existential crisis, but right after I got an invitation to play chess with the ghost of Bengt Ekerot.  Many of my friends’ videos had major milestones under their most liked posts like marriages, babies, houses and new jobs.  Mine had pictures of my Nanowrimo wins (I’ve never shared what I’ve written with anyone) and two posts that could be boiled down to “Breaking Bad is awesome”.  Don’t get me wrong, Breaking Bad is awesome, but it’s hard—even when you try not to sum up your life in likes and retweets—to see that sum up how you spent your twenties on Facebook as you are about to hit 30.

The day this posts, I hit the big 3-0.  Since I don’t drink, 30 is the first age I’ve had any interest in since 18.  It is pretty much the last major post where you can consider yourself young.  I am still younger comparatively speaking to a good chunk of the population, but I don’t associate being in your 30s as a decade of youth.  Your 30s are generally the decade you settle down: you figured out what you’re going to do with your life in your 20s and now it’s time to move from there.  Well, my 20s weren’t like that.  There were a lot of things that I won’t get into here, but suffice to say I didn’t expect to be where I am now and I didn’t expect to have made as little progress as I did.

It hasn’t helped that I had a series of difficult years through most of my 20s.  It culminated last year, which was defined as the year I lost my dad.  While it isn’t as intense as it was when it started, the death of my father is still often in my thoughts, and the grieving process has affected those thoughts more than any other problem I’ve been dealing with lately.  Then there were two of my high school classmates who died this past fall.  I wasn’t close to them (I don’t think I spoke to either of them after graduation), but the reality check was still powerful.  With these reminders of mortality, it’d be hard for it not to affect how I think about what I’m doing right now.

However, I don’t want this post to be a pity party.  I’m reminded of Conan O’Brien’s monologue at the end of his last show as host of The Tonight Show.  “Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get,” he said.  “But if you work really hard and you're kind, amazing things will happen.”  I still believe that’s true.  Even the people whose Plan A worked out for them, it’s unlikely it played out exactly as they expected.  Not to mention sometimes failing can be the best thing to happen to somebody.  So while most of my 20s was unsatisfying, it could pave the way for a better 30s.

Those who know journalistic terms (or just fans of HBO’s The Wire, whose last episode is called “- 30 -“) will know journalists have used “-30-“ to denote the end of a story.  30 could be considered the end of a story, but as Dr. Manhattan said in Watchmen, “Nothing ever ends.”  This isn’t Logan’s Run where life literally ends at 30.  30 is a beginning.  There’s still a lot for me to experience in this life and things for me to do: I hope 30 is the year I finally finish a draft of my book that I could show my beta readers to list an example.  It is hard not to get hung up on other people’s progress compared to our own, especially as time goes on and we hit these milestone numbers, and social media makes it easier to see everyone else’s achievements.  All we can hope to do is play the game as best as we can, because ultimately that checkmate will come for us all.