Turning Thirty

Started: 2010-09-07 20:41:09

Submitted: 2010-09-07 21:37:25

Visibility: World-readable

Today is my thirtieth birthday.

This will, no doubt, mark me as younger than much of my loyal audience, who may go ahead and skip the rest of this entry as the narcissistic ramblings of someone born too late to have a legitimate claim on Gen X, but still too old to self-identify as a "Millennial". (I was, after all, born in 1980, but my stunted exposure to popular culture as a child left me to remember Michael Jackson only as a washed-up former star with curious habits. I hope Calvin will have the same exposure to Justin Bieber.)

Several weeks ago I contemplated leaving my twenties behind and entering my thirties and began to worry about getting old. Thirty is not "old" by any meaningful definition, except for "not as young as I've been". In many aspects of my life, I've worked hard to get where I am: happily married, with an exasperating adorable toddler, a great job at a stable Fortune 500 company, and an active Boulder lifestyle. I ran a 10k personal record this spring, and climbed more mountains this summer than in any previous year, but off in the distance I see my physical abilities peaking and declining. When I was twenty-nine, my inevitable peak and decline was easy enough to ignore. Now that I'm thirty I'm not so sure.

All I need to do is make sure I keep doing the things I enjoy doing, which doesn't seem like it'll be very hard.