The Thing About Thirty (part 2)

Back in July I wrote a post about how while turning 30 doesn't bother me, the fact that it doesn't bother me...bothers me. I wondered if I lacked strategic direction in my life, and that maybe my friends were all freaking out about turning 30 because they hadn't accomplished the goals they had set out for themselves. Whereas I'm totally cool with this upcoming birthday because I never had those big, must-do-by-the-big-3-0 dreams in the first place. So while my personal freakout isn't about entering a new decade of life, it's about the fact that maybe I'm not putting any effort into figuring out where I want my life to go.

Thinking about the future opens a whole other can of freakout worms, because when I actually try to think about what I want in life, I seem to be in this sort of pattern of arrested development, like my brain stopped maturing at around age 25.

As a general rule, my waking non-work hours are spent trying to do every possible fun thing I can find in New York. Bars, restaurants, concerts, events, you name it. This part of me that prioritizes fun over everything else has been relatively consistent since I was 22 years old and first moved to the city. And while I certainly have a lot of friends who feel the same way - or who will at least indulge me and join in on a few of the myriad things I invite people to do - it's definitely getting a little harder to find people willing to accompany me to stuff. Because, this pains me to say, I think I'm getting too old to do some of the things I want to do.

At 29 I'm hardly over the hill, but those around me are trying to settle down, and when you're trying to steer your life towards a spouse, a house in the suburbs and a family, you're naturally going to stop being quite as interested in going to random events, particularly when those events are late, or on a weeknight, or involve copious alcohol consumption, or otherwise interrupt your life as a real, responsible adult. Furthermore, because the 30 year-olds are...doing whatever it is that 30 year-olds who don't go out do with their time, I'm pretty much older than everyone. A lot of the time. In a lot of places. I would guess with a pretty high confidence level that the average age at each of the 5 festivals I went to this summer was well below 29.

So this is another thing that worries me. I'm turning 30 in less than 2 months but I am no more interested in having children or buying real estate than I was last year or the year before or any year before that. Even in New York City, where seemingly everyone gets started on this path to being a "real" person much later than they do everywhere else in the country, right about now is the time that my natural interests are supposed to shift from the irresponsible to the responsible. But...they aren't shifting. This is upsetting because a) what's wrong with me? and b) I realistically only have a few more years at most before I will officially be too old to live the life I'm leading now. I can hold on as long as humanly possible to this Peter Pan-esque dream of being in my 20s forever (or at least acting like I am), but at some point, the jig is going to be up.

And then what? Will I be stuck in this weird purgatory somewhere between being young and settling down? What exactly happens if, in 5 or 10 years, I am still without a family or a house but then I'm also without any friends in the same boat? Do I have to become one of those people who lives for her career and that's it? (Please say no).

Perhaps the most important question is, am I being melodramatic? I'm not trying to sound like the world is going to end on that hopefully-gorgeously-crisp October day when I leave my 20s forever, but I can't ignore the fact that everything and everyone around me is changing. And I don't know yet what my place is in all of this.

For the moment, though, I'm far from alone in being 30 and unsettled. So I guess I'll embrace 29 as long as it lasts, and just see where it goes from there.