Choreographed pall bearers.
I’ve started to write this blog about a dozen times in the 2 weeks since I turned 30, but every time I got started I found myself preoccupied by the fact that it sounded false, over hyped, and confusing. I’d get going on some kind of unimportant tangent that went on for multiple paragraphs, or I’d think something wasn’t pointed enough, but by the time I’d sharpened it, it began to feel trite or saccharine. I kept coming back to it because I felt like this is something that’s important and that I’d like the emotional turmoil of aging to be documented for the tiny doughy archeologists from Venus* that will some day uncover whatever we leave behind after we destroy our civilization in an orgy of self replicating nano-murderers.
I guess the reason I’m incapable of making a big deal out of turning 30 is that… it’s frankly not that big of a deal. When I look at my life over the last 10 years, I can certainly say that I’m not where I intended to be, but that I’ve also accomplished all kinds of things that I never anticipated. I’ve established long and meaningful relationships with people who value me, I’ve started an honest to god internet relationship advice column, I’ve even brewed beer and mead. I distinctly remember not being anxious about turning 20, and that decade has brought some of the worst times of my life. I was disappointed, betrayed and forced to weather the corrosive effects of failure so many times that by the time I’d actually reached my 30th birthday I had taken off the sickly green lenses of self loathing that make those experiences so poisonous in favor of the clear unfettered sight that experience presents.
I guess what this process has really taught me more than anything is that making predictions about where your life will take you is folly by nature. If you’re doing what you’re supposed to… if you’re learning from every mistake you make, developing and cultivating your relationships both big and small and if you’re looking to the future for the surprises and joyful moments that it will inevitably bring you, then you should never be capable of disappointing a younger less experienced you. If anything you should be progressively more pleased with who you are becoming, as you chuckle more and more at the foolishness and naiveté of that earlier version of yourself.
You’ve never met a bigger tool than me at 20. I was an over-emotional doormat that took criticism way too personally, I wouldn’t listen to rap, I hated mushrooms and beer, and I’d never gotten far enough outside of my bubble to actually be able to look back at it and realize just how small my world had been up to that point. I wanted to be a rockstar, and a computer programmer, I had awful hair and an truly horrible sense of style. I was at 20 what I would now consider a man-child and to be quite frank I don’t really value the opinions of man-children.
Hopefully I’ll share the same opinion at 40 as I look back at this blog from my million dollar penthouse, but for now I’ll keep living the only way I know how until I either explode or finally invent the murderous cloud of self replicating nano-bots that flense you all into nothing.
*No doubt listening to Valiant Thorr on their iPods, or iPawds, or whatever the hell the Venutian people call their digital music players.
Tourniquet 2: Double down.
The process of cutting a person out of your life is usually a gradual unconscious one. We hang out with some new people for a few weeks and before we realize it they’re beginning to fill the shoes of the old trustworthy friends we’ve known since before we can remember. Soon the old numbers start being forgotten, the txts stop being sent, and soon we lose entirely the connection with the person that we once felt so fond of.
This is the natural (albeit tragic) way of things. We don’t really mean to do it, it just happens slowly over time when we’re not paying as much attention as we probably should be.
When a person is cut off suddenly however, the universe itself seems to teeter.
Breaking up with someone is something I’ve had to do more times than I ever wanted, and usually there’s a sense of regret so palpable that the only thing that will drown out it’s bitterness is self destructive behavior, or the taste of someone new. I’m a strong proponent of remaining friends, but sometimes that’s just not possible, and in these instances that bitter regret becomes an entirely different jabberwock. It rages, and it cries, and it feels a massive need for some kind of resolution. I’ve been on both sides of this carnival of the macabre, but when it is unrequited it balloons into a monster that no normal approach seems to be able to sate.
When last I was the one doing the reeling, it took 5 years to find the kind of closure I once thought was impossible and I found it in a place I never expected… but this time, I was the one wielding the hatchet that ended all things, and I’ve got to admit that it’s almost worse to be on this side of it. I simply don’t know what vorpal sword might turn this person’s torment into forward momentum. I don’t know how many ways one can phrase “I don’t know what the answer is, but I know I have nothing to do with it”. I’m not going to change my number, I’m not going to move, and I’m probably not ever going to stop feeling the intense conflicting senses of loss and anger whenever they try to get back into my life, so I suppose I have to just handle it until it’s not an issue anymore. Maybe they’ll see that the loneliness feeds on this kind of obsession and that the two just get fat on each other’s bitter tissues.
Tourniquet
Drama is the fuel for engines not native to our species. We’re hand crafted for survival and when you take away that most basic of motivations through the magic of modern societal evolution we’re left with no real hard-wired biological motivation.
What happens when you take away all the natural predators of a species? They destroy themselves. This human drama is the fuel that we’ll use to burn down our own house. It’s the lemming’s cliff, or the deer’s deforestation. When left to our own devices, we turn our attention to the lives of others and begin to judge, and rip, and try to cut little pieces out until they fit into the model that we find so valuable. We assault their values, their ethics, their politics, their appearance, and their motivations until they fit the image in our minds of what a predator is supposed to be… an image dozens of generations out of date.
We can’t really help it. It’s in our blood. The best we can hope to do is overcome it briefly enough to make a single real connection with someone we value… someone above our petty need to break down all that we view is superior to ourselves.
All we can hope to do is lie to ourselves just long enough that we find someone else telling the same lie.
Burning time.
So I’m 4 days post Hotlanta, and 2 days into what’s rapidly becoming the worst spring cold I’ve ever experienced, and I finally feel like it’s time to really start getting things done. I’ve worked on my resume and cleaned most of my house today, and I’m meeting a friend in about an hour to solve all the worlds problems. This productivity feels pretty damn good, especially after a self loathing morning realizing that I’m really not terribly happy in position I’m currently in. 29 and unemployed is never a whole lot of fun, but throw in “not one verifiable accomplishment” and mix it with a little “no girlfriend” and you find yourself with a face full of crisis and no tissues to blot it off with.
Atlanta was really good. I had some important conversations with family members, spent some incredibly valuable time with my grandmother, and got to know my parents a little better in the mean time… all in all a universally good trip. Since then I’ve spent some time with a very old friend, met a new friend, watched a handful of movies, and started back in on the book, which also feels really good. I guess I just really don’t have much to complain about right now, which we all know is a terrible situation to be in for someone who gets most of their creative energy from a deeply negative place.
Oh well 
. Right now I’d rather suffer a creative lapse in the midst of happiness than suffer the unhappiness that brings me so much to say.
Causation.
I’m off to Atlanta in the morning, do come and visit.