I‘M ABOUT to turn 30. By the time you read this, I’ll probably already be 30. (HELLO FROM THE PAST. BARACK OBAMA IS PRESIDENT AND THREE DOLLARS WILL GET YOU TWO DOZEN HOREHOUND HARD CANDIES [I ACTUALLY RESEARCHED HOREHOUND PRICES FOR THAT JOKE (!).])
Turning 30 is a ponderous thing. On one hand, I know it must mean something. I’m departing my 20s—a decade that’s a simulation of adulthood. In your 20s, you’re given an assembly line of second chances; you’re forgiven for rebooting your entire existence; you’re a baby giraffe stumbling into your burgeoning responsibilities. Now I’m 30 and my indiscretions are no longer so youthful, even though my visage remains so. (I’m handsome, fam. Shoutouts to Kiehl’s and to excellent Semitic genetics.)
It feels like the stakes are being raised. It feels like there is less time to dally, and that feeling is significant and cumbersome. AND I feel absurd for feeling that feeling, because when I turn 30, when that cannonball REALLY hits me in the stomach, I’ll be only seconds removed from being 29. AND (sorry for starting two sentences with “and,” all of my teachers) that’s the other part of turning 30, right? It doesn’t really mean shit. It’s just another day in the meandering line for Splash Mountain of days that makes up your life. Nobody comes up to you when you turn 30 with an LCD Soundsystem boxset and a book about appreciating wine, and says, “You’re into this shit now. Hand in your badge and your Xbox One.” Adulthood is erosion and evolution—it isn’t cataclysmic. Your youth doesn’t die off like the dinosaurs, it dies off like how humans will die off: slowly, while refreshing Twitter.
So what’s the fucking deal? (ALSO, WHAT DA FUCK IS AN APPLEBEEZ?) It’s not like I treat people in their 30s any differently than I treat my friends in their 20s. Most of us don’t give any significant fucks about age. I found out my friend Matt was 40 when he invited me to his 40th birthday party. I had no idea he was 40, I just thought he liked Bob Seger a lot. It doesn’t change a thing. At some point in life, people just started being “friend years old.” How old is Matt? He’s friend years old.
When you lean in to kiss a girl and time starts to thicken like molasses, and poems start to make sense, and you stand atop the rapturous heights of physical and emotional and spiritual splendor, and every molecule of your everything knows this feeling is enough, and all your insecurities and problems freeze and fall and shatter and seem absurd; when you touch that ecstasy that gives true pain context, what goes through your head? “What’s this girl’s next birthday cake gonna look like?” Right? GTFO.
So why is 30 so big? I’ve thought about it a lot, and I think it’s nothing more than a reminder of mortality, and that reminder is the most thoughtful gift I’ll get this year, because maybe I’ll savor this decade more than the last. @IanKarmel
Or maybe you will die tomorrow.
Listen, Ian, it’s not *time* that’s supposed to thicken when you kiss a girl. (And, if she asks, just tell her that it’s “friend inches long.”)
Like I said last time you wrote this, your thirties are fun. It’s your forties that’ll fucking kill you.
“I had no idea he was 40, I just thought he liked Bob Seger a lot.”
Gold.
The biggest change when you turn 30 is that being reminded when anything happened makes you momentarily feel old. Wow, was Inception really four years ago? College Dropout was ten years ago? Live’s “Throwing Copper” was really twenty years ago? Ian Karmel was THIRTY fucking years ago?
Man, I’m getting old.
Another mullenial coming of age…ha ha ha!!! Welcome to adulthood loser! Lookin a little long in the tooth. A very reflective piece here. So will you be coming out of retirement?
Well, if one is to compare ones’ life to a bell-curve, the decline doesn’t really begin till 36.
So, you got that going for you.
Why would a forty year old like Bob Seger? That doesn’t make sense. Did you mean Radiohead?
30 was when my life started to bloom. My 30s were when I started to realize what I really wanted, and know how to go about getting it. The 30s are when your life turns awesome. Happy Birthday, Ian.
Everyone likes Bob Seger. That’s just science.
30 years ago when you were born, 30 yr olds didn’t have room mates or live with their parents. They had jobs, houses, kids, careers ect… You can rest easy because todays expectations of a 30 yr old are pretty minimal.
^ Don’t be an asshole. The economic opportunities are demonstrably worse today than in 1984. “Kids today are lazy” has always been bullshit.
–a 44 year-old
Another privileged white guy reflects on how juvenile society permits him to be in the social sandbox while the less fortunate have to grow the fuck up and know it’s nothing profound or expected, they have to do it to survive. Keep taking those baby steps, Ian!
“The economic opportunities are demonstrably worse today than in 1984. “
That’s the point, hence the lower expectations. When i turned 30, all the opportunities the boomers enjoyed were long dried up, but the expectations were still the same.