You now have one year left to trust me...

Greg Dean, author of the webcomic Real Life had a great insight today. In the post below the comic, he writes one of the best descriptions I've ever read about feeling young one moment and realizing how old you are the next. I can't wait to tell him how much better it's going to get in about seven years, though.

I'm turning 30 in less than a month, and I'm depressed about it goddamn it. I only have to do this once, so if I want to feel a mind-numbing sense of dread about it, then I wish everyone would stop trying to make me feel better. I'm getting so tired of hearing older people talk about how I'm still just a kid or hearing younger people say how much they are looking forward to it. For them it's either a fond memory like the summer after highschool or an abstract mile post like getting married or becoming an alcoholic, so of course they think it's great. If you're younger by more than a couple of years, then chances are you still think there's plenty of time to do all of the great things you want to. News flash: there isn't. Quick: Name the last celebrity or industry leader you heard about that started their brilliant career after 30. (Jesus doesn't count... especially if you don't consider crucifixion to be your idea of retiring at 33.) If you are more than a few years older, then you probably wish that you had it to do over again, and are doing the exact, same thing I'm doing with my 20th birthday, so just shut it!

For me, this is a looming, nay, impending catastrophe that will swallow my 20's whole like some great constricting snake and crap out my last decade before middle age. As my wife would say, "Quit telling me it's not so bad. C'mon dear... sympathy!" I'm throwing myself a gigantic pity party. For the next 20-something days, just picture an enormous multi-layer cake covered in grey frosting, lint and those weird balls of fiber that you find under the couch, sprinkled with shattered dreams and missed opportunities and lovingly topped with a grown man crying in his beer. All right, everyone: dig in! Mmmmm-boy! That's good pathos!

Deep down, I know that this isn't logical, but like most psychological reactions it's not meant to be rational. It's been years since I've individually accepted most of the mistakes and lost chances I racked up over the years. But there's just something about starting my fourth decade that seems to bring the totality of their sum into stark relief. Here are a few of my greatest hits from age 18 to present:

- There's that ignorant, clostrophobic and festering little sore of a fundamentalist University in central Arkansas that I lost a year of my life to. I should've gotten a better part-time job and payed my way through college instead of wasting a minute there.

- There's the two majors in college I could've skipped on my way to getting a degree I never finished in what I do for a living. I should've enrolled in a good BFA and used my computer to earn money right off the bat.

- There's the brief conversation I had with my dad in '93 about something called "hypertext" used to make "pages" into a "web" for this new "internet" thing I kept hearing about... the one I never followed up on for 5 years. I should've gotten rich, damnit!

- There's that stupid relationship I wasted my time and eneregy on that turned out to be six months of dating, followed by three and a half years of breaking up. I should've sat in that class and not talked to her for one syllable.

- There was staying in Memphis for the better part of two decades and hating it for not being where I wasn't, instead of just going somewhere else to see what there was for me out there. I should've started a career and then moved to a hotspot for new talent.

- There was taking up and dropping weight training on two separate occasions. I yo-yoed between 130 and 150 pounds, before my magical metabolism evaporated in a puff of mere mortality. I should've continued to lift after I took it up at age 16 and stayed with it. As it is, my body seems to have developed the ability to grow a stubborn little paunch of bodyfat that covers what used to be a washboard stomache.

- There was the fact that I waited until my mid-twenties to get good at talking to girls. (Granted, I did eventually meet my incredibly hot wife, but that's a long time to be miserable in the romance department.) I should've just talked to them instead of looking for the perfect opening for the perfect girl.

...And so forth. I guess that the problem with all of this is the fact that I couldn't have known then what I know now. I'm not going to wake up 20 years old tommorow with a head full of secret insider information. Life isn't like a movie or TV series, where you wake up one day and you've got a second chance at some turning point or period of opportunity. (On a side note: I always wondered about why they never show the downside to that senario: if you remember everything you know before you go back, you've probably still forgotten everything that you can't remember either. A second chance at highschool seems great, until you realize that you've forgotten your locker combination, your best friend's phone number and most of your pre-calculous.)

No, the reality of our remaining time on earth is a lot more like those crossword puzzle-a-day books that seem really complex, have cryptic clues about what to do ("34 down: five letters, the most common member of the order Chiroptera") and the only answers you have are the ones for how yesterday should've gone. ("Great, knowing that "unctious" is an eight letter synonym for "fulsom" is really going to help me with 34 down.") Well, I'm drawing to the close of a decade's worth of the most difficult puzzles I've ever tackled, and right or wrong, that book is just about all filled out. In August, I'll be recieving a brand collection of 3,650 puzzles to start working on. No peeking ahead when I get stuck, but everyday, I'll get a new set of problems to solve, and a chance to see how well I answered the challenges I've already worked through.

I think most of this "1/3-life crisis" is just my way of confronting whatever it is I think that I've done to hold myself back up to now. My "greatest hits" list doesn't doesn't include all of the interesting things I've done up to this point either:

- Ive been the lead in a professional theatrical production.

- I've played the bass for a living in a regionally successful jazz band.

- I've worked in a major label recording studio.

- I've been on a cross country bus tour with some world class spoken word artists.

- I've gained attention as a national level slam poet.

- I've taught myself at least three interesting jobs.

... And so forth. I'm really lucky, in so many ways, as I'm going into my 30s with a new job that's going to pay better than my current one, in better shape than I've been in for years, married to a beautiful woman whom I love, and with a relatively full and interesting life. I just want to make it through the next 3,650 sets of challenges that come my way. At least then, maybe 40 will really be something to get worked up about.