Some thoughts on turning thirty.
* Nick in the Great Gatsby turns thirty in the middle. Fitzgerald uses this as a thematic or atmospheric point. Essentially saying that right in the middle of all of the Daisy and Gatsby crap, Nick has suddenly found himself too old for this juvenile bullshit. It's a sad and sublime moment in the novel, as I always saw it. What that means for me right now I don't know just yet. I still enjoy the occasional childish moment here and there. All the time, no, of course not, but I've hated that since I was eighteen anyhow. But still, The Great Gatsby and Nick turning thirty in the middle just keeps coming to mind.
*Women turning thirty go apeshit about it. Men have a few sleepless nights, and get over it. Obviously all about the unfair standards about youth and what they mean about physical beauty, and how that can hurt some people more than others, i think that's fairly clear. My wrinkles mean character, a woman's mean age, after all. Not fair in the slightest. But all i can do is not be a part of that bullshit myself. A woman over thirty is beautiful if she is beautiful, forget about age.
* 'American Dad' sucks. This doesn't have anything to do with turning thirty, at least that I am aware of. But it needs to be said as often as possible. It's a lame show, because if your pilot is lame the rest of your run just can't be any better. I hope Seth McFarlane really is sticking it to Fox for cancelling 'Family Guy' with this goose egg. As long as new 'Family Guy' episodes are coming...
* For the last few years I have been experiencing at random moments a feeling of imminent death. What Heidegger used to talk about as the 'throwness' feeling, realizing your own mortality, and leading to the grasping of the 'dasein' and 'mitsein', and all those other fun made up German words.
It sounds fun, but it's really no fun. To suddenly and for no reason have your heart start skipping over and over and to get lightheaded walking down a hallway or waiting for the bus. All just because your mind happens to go some place randomly you can feel the void grabbing at your shoulders. There's a reason Sartre termed the same feeling Nausea; because when you feel it you very well may throw up in a vain attempt to fill that void with something.
It started out very rarely. But as I approached this milestone, they started to become more frequent. Last year I'd get that nausea about twice a week, and they'd last an entire night. Especially in October of that year. I really thought for a while that I was actually going to die somehow soon and I was actually experiencing a premonition of it. I could think of no other reason for the episodes.
But October passed, I'm still here, and even the feeling started to wane. Now I feel it every other week or so, and even then only very briefly, a moment or two, and it passes. I think what it amounts to is the realization that i am not immortal, that yes, stupid things could very well kill me one of these times. Even no stupid activity and I could still buy it. I always grasped the concept of how fragile life is, but i think I've only recently actually experienced the concept firsthand.
* I can no longer ever hit on an eighteen year old, never mind actually have sex with one. I suppose this has been true for a few years now, and I knew it, but only now do I see it clearly. Whatever happened to the grand old days of thinking that if they're old enough to buy some smokes they're old enough for anything? Just being old enough to buy beer in a bar legally isn't quite enough anymore. Not for me. It's not a question of not relating to someone that young anymore, I never did even when i was that age myself. But it would almost seem pedophilic to hook up with a girl that young now. Really, i think I could never have anything intimate to do with a woman who is not even as old as my smoking habit.
* i have had an incredibly bad week leading up to my birthday. I won't go into the details of it all, because its all so long and tedious and just sounds sad if I talk about it, but sufficed to say very small things have put me in the gutter, and the huge bad things that went down didn't help either. On Saturday last I dropped close to seven miles of film on the floor and spent the next eight hours having to put it back together. That's been my week leading up to the big 30.
I can only think that this was my twenties getting in its last licks before I am free of them. I'll say it outright- my twenties were not great. I entered this past decade of my life full of hope, full of ego, and full of talent, ability, and potential. Over the last ten years, well, I still have the talent, ability, and potential, but just about all of my ego and hope, not to mention my self confidence, were shattered long before I got halfway though my twenties. it's not been a great decade for my self esteem.
But perhaps all the bad of my life is behind me now, and i can start to foster and grow my own ego again that i built up in my teens. I got all the tools to do it, I am smart, still reasonably attractive (unless you think otherwise), and am the best writer I know (okay, still have some of that ego). maybe it'll never be like it was way back then in the truly young and dumb teens, but even a smidgen of that arrogance could do me some good with a few lucky breaks here and there that the twenties never gave me.
-That's the things going through my head these days. Been a strange few days. Perhaps I just think too much.
* Nick in the Great Gatsby turns thirty in the middle. Fitzgerald uses this as a thematic or atmospheric point. Essentially saying that right in the middle of all of the Daisy and Gatsby crap, Nick has suddenly found himself too old for this juvenile bullshit. It's a sad and sublime moment in the novel, as I always saw it. What that means for me right now I don't know just yet. I still enjoy the occasional childish moment here and there. All the time, no, of course not, but I've hated that since I was eighteen anyhow. But still, The Great Gatsby and Nick turning thirty in the middle just keeps coming to mind.
*Women turning thirty go apeshit about it. Men have a few sleepless nights, and get over it. Obviously all about the unfair standards about youth and what they mean about physical beauty, and how that can hurt some people more than others, i think that's fairly clear. My wrinkles mean character, a woman's mean age, after all. Not fair in the slightest. But all i can do is not be a part of that bullshit myself. A woman over thirty is beautiful if she is beautiful, forget about age.
* 'American Dad' sucks. This doesn't have anything to do with turning thirty, at least that I am aware of. But it needs to be said as often as possible. It's a lame show, because if your pilot is lame the rest of your run just can't be any better. I hope Seth McFarlane really is sticking it to Fox for cancelling 'Family Guy' with this goose egg. As long as new 'Family Guy' episodes are coming...
* For the last few years I have been experiencing at random moments a feeling of imminent death. What Heidegger used to talk about as the 'throwness' feeling, realizing your own mortality, and leading to the grasping of the 'dasein' and 'mitsein', and all those other fun made up German words.
It sounds fun, but it's really no fun. To suddenly and for no reason have your heart start skipping over and over and to get lightheaded walking down a hallway or waiting for the bus. All just because your mind happens to go some place randomly you can feel the void grabbing at your shoulders. There's a reason Sartre termed the same feeling Nausea; because when you feel it you very well may throw up in a vain attempt to fill that void with something.
It started out very rarely. But as I approached this milestone, they started to become more frequent. Last year I'd get that nausea about twice a week, and they'd last an entire night. Especially in October of that year. I really thought for a while that I was actually going to die somehow soon and I was actually experiencing a premonition of it. I could think of no other reason for the episodes.
But October passed, I'm still here, and even the feeling started to wane. Now I feel it every other week or so, and even then only very briefly, a moment or two, and it passes. I think what it amounts to is the realization that i am not immortal, that yes, stupid things could very well kill me one of these times. Even no stupid activity and I could still buy it. I always grasped the concept of how fragile life is, but i think I've only recently actually experienced the concept firsthand.
* I can no longer ever hit on an eighteen year old, never mind actually have sex with one. I suppose this has been true for a few years now, and I knew it, but only now do I see it clearly. Whatever happened to the grand old days of thinking that if they're old enough to buy some smokes they're old enough for anything? Just being old enough to buy beer in a bar legally isn't quite enough anymore. Not for me. It's not a question of not relating to someone that young anymore, I never did even when i was that age myself. But it would almost seem pedophilic to hook up with a girl that young now. Really, i think I could never have anything intimate to do with a woman who is not even as old as my smoking habit.
* i have had an incredibly bad week leading up to my birthday. I won't go into the details of it all, because its all so long and tedious and just sounds sad if I talk about it, but sufficed to say very small things have put me in the gutter, and the huge bad things that went down didn't help either. On Saturday last I dropped close to seven miles of film on the floor and spent the next eight hours having to put it back together. That's been my week leading up to the big 30.
I can only think that this was my twenties getting in its last licks before I am free of them. I'll say it outright- my twenties were not great. I entered this past decade of my life full of hope, full of ego, and full of talent, ability, and potential. Over the last ten years, well, I still have the talent, ability, and potential, but just about all of my ego and hope, not to mention my self confidence, were shattered long before I got halfway though my twenties. it's not been a great decade for my self esteem.
But perhaps all the bad of my life is behind me now, and i can start to foster and grow my own ego again that i built up in my teens. I got all the tools to do it, I am smart, still reasonably attractive (unless you think otherwise), and am the best writer I know (okay, still have some of that ego). maybe it'll never be like it was way back then in the truly young and dumb teens, but even a smidgen of that arrogance could do me some good with a few lucky breaks here and there that the twenties never gave me.
-That's the things going through my head these days. Been a strange few days. Perhaps I just think too much.
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zh
lay off the caffeine.
oh and lots of love on your birhday.
speak soon.
xxoo
hcs