Thoughts on Thirties

No one ever tells you about your thirties. It's the decade of your life you are least prepared for. As a kid you have school, so you know what your life is going to be until you're 16 at which point you become old enough to have sex and you figure that having sex will keep you occupied for at least a year. Chances are it's more likely that trying to have sex as opposed to actually having the sex will form the larger part of your year, at which point you'll be old enough to drive and cruise around looking for girls/boys to attempt to have sex with. Then you look forward to 18. You'll officially be an adult - old enough to vote and most importantly, old enough to drink and there's a good chance that you'll have met someone willing to have sex with you and actually done it by this point. 19 is pretty much just more of the same and then you hit 20. So you're no longer a teenager, but that's no problem; you're still young and cool, it just means that you're no longer a kid and are now a fully sophisticated adult who may have had sex on a number of occasions, possibly with several partners by now. 21 is a milestone birthday for some reason, even though it's more of the same and then the next big one after that is when life begins at 40.

Only it's not. As you hit 25 and 26, something starts to creep in at the back of your mind. 27, 28... and then at 29 it hits you. The next big one isn't 40, it's 30 and no one has told you about it. You start to panic - you don't want to turn 30. What happens? You know at 40 you are out of touch with the kids and have to start wearing cardigans or jumpers or something, but what happens at 30? Do you start buying knitwear but not putting it on yet, stocking up in preparation? Do you wear it indoors but change into something cool to go out in? Do you still go out?

There's no guidance for you anywhere. Music is aimed at either teens or if it's more serious stuff, your parents. T.V. is the same - programs-a-plenty for kids, teens, twenty-somethings and generations older than you, but what for thirty year-olds? Even the programs with 30-something stars are trying to pass them off as 20-somethings. (Friends anyone?)

One of the reasons no one has told you about being 30 is that it's very different for our generation to our parents'. By the time my father was 30, I was 3. By the time my mother was 30, I was 8. They had grown up and been adults for a while by then. They'd got married, had jobs - careers even, and had kids. By the time I was 30, I'd just got a job in the field I now work in - the first steps into my career.

I didn't want to turn 30. I was enjoying my 20's nicely, thank you very much. I was getting to grips with a few things, growing up gradually but not rushing into anything in particular. True, by my mid 20's I had noticed a few grey hairs in my beard and my male pattern baldness was settled in, but I was still young and I had time. When 30 crept up onto the immediate horizon I got the fear pretty badly. I felt I should know what the hell was going on in my life. I should have achieved more by now. Shouldn't I be a fully fledged adult by this point? What do I do for fun now? Am I having a mid life crisis at 29? If so does that mean I'll only live to be 58? Did I leave the iron on?

I'll break it down for you. I'm 32 now, so I can speak with a little experience about being a thirtysomething.
Here's the bad news:

• There is nothing really that caters for your age group. No specific music, T.V., films, or pastime's of any sort.
• As a thirtysomething, you may experience moments of, "why have I not got my life more sorted than this at my age?"
• You may still live in a shared house, or even worse, with your parents - which you definitely didn't think you would be doing by now.
• You may notice the first signs of aging: grey hairs, the appearance of wrinkles, baldness for men, slightly less perkiness in the breasts for women. Ironically you may also find that you still get greasy skin and spots from time to time, which you had previously thought would be long behind you.
• You are already starting to notice you are out of touch with the kids and may even find yourself complaining about them.

Here's the good news:

• Although there's nothing specifically catered towards your age bracket, you are at a nice age where you can do pretty much anything and not look too out of place. You can go to pubs, clubs, bowling alleys, restaurants, parks... wherever and no one will bat an eyelid.
• Your musical and film tastes etc, won't so much change as just develop and branch out, but you'll still like most of the stuff you did when you were 20.
• You're at a good age, where you can hang out and talk to 20 somethings and have plenty to talk about without coming off as 'the creepy older person that hangs around with younger people', but also can hold your own in a room full of 40 or even 50 somethings. In a room full of 20 and 40 somethings, you can act as a bridge to the generation gap and talk to everyone.
  
• You may not think you have your life sorted, but actually it might be more sorted than you think when you look at it. Do you have a job? A career even? A car? A partner or in a serious relationship? A home? The fact is that even if you said 'no' to all of those, chances are you know what you want and where you are going better than ever before. You know your own mind better than ever before and are less afraid to speak your opinion than ever before. You are more yourself than you have ever previously been and if you think back, your probably more comfortable in your own skin now than ever before, so you are more confident too. That's huge.
• You are taken seriously as an adult by the world at large. Every now and again you get called 'young man' or 'young lady' by someone older, but it's usually someone over 60 at least and you actually take it as a compliment now. People of 50 and below talk to you like a person instead of a child and include you in conversations, even asking you your opinion on things, which you actually have to offer now.
• You have some really good friends that have been with you for a long time. You think of them differently to people that you hang out with, either from work or even socially. Your friends are the ones that have stuck by you throughout and you may or may not live close to them any more, but you keep in touch and you would jump in the car if they needed anything and you know they would do the same for you.
  

Basically you are more grounded, sorted and know your own mind more. You don't have to answer to as many people any more - maybe just your boss and your partner (but if your relationship is an adult one, then it's more equal give and take than previous ones.).

So far I've really enjoyed being a 30-something. I never really saw the American series of that name in the late 80's, early 90's, whenever it was, but it looked like it applied to my parents' generation more than mine from what I saw. Most of them were married, some had kids and nearly all of them wore jumpers or Laura Ashley dresses. Me? I wear jeans, t-shirts, trainers and hoodies with skateboarding logos on them, as well as beanies or caps to keep my bald head warm. My girlfriend says I dress like a teenager, but she's 29 and scared of turning 30, so what does she know? I've tried to tell her it will be cool, but she's going to have to find out for herself. Maybe going through the fear and coming out the other side with a feeling of, "Oh. Really? That was it?" is something we have to go through like a right of passage. To paraphrase the mighty Morpheus: "No one can tell you what being 30 is like, you have to experience it for yourself..."