Thoughts on the threshold of thirty
Jul. 14th, 2013 09:48 pmThere are times, like yesterday, when I find myself idly leafing through pictures of you. And I get to some of the pictures from a few years back, and I look at them and think "My God, she was so young." And I am confused because I don't remember you ever being that young. You had always been so mature and confident and.... not this girl I'm looking at. I can see you in her, though, and I marvel at what she will one day become. It's like cupping a seed in the palm of your hand and seeing the flower curled up inside it, waiting. --![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cyrano
It seems almost a self-congratulatory point to start at, but my friend's comment frankly captures my own sentiments, too. I've long since come to terms with the fact that my present self, while seeming confident and collected and smart, will seem painfully out of touch and naive five years from now. But it's also nice to think that in those five years I'll have grown enough to feel that way about my consciousness now.
For a long time (so long that I can't even remember where I first read it), my favorite metaphor for the aging process has been that of the Matryoshka doll - each year adding another layer, but all of the previous layers still contained within. And while that still seems accurate, if somewhat imprecise, I find myself wondering if it's more along the lines of a continuum - where future versions of yourself exist, and perhaps even have an effect on, your current self, just as your past ones do.
Bah. This is what I get for waiting until 10:30 the night before my birthday to finally try to write a post. Metaphysical musings that probably don't make much sense. Perhaps I'd best stick to the 'past in review' model, then.
In retrospect, twenty-eight (especially the latter half of it) was something of a crisis year for me. As with so many things, it seemed to stem largely from my sense of identity, or lack thereof. I'd had little luck finding a career-type job here in Arizona, I'd dabbled in various artistic endeavours but never long or deeply enough to properly consider myself an artist, I wanted desperately to write but couldn't seem to motivate myself to do so regularly. I had few friends in the area and none that needed any particular kind of help or support. I had little luck finding opportunities to sing; even karaoke opportunities were practically nonexistent. So that left...being a wife. Which, while pleasant, was hardly in line with how I saw myself, and certainly not without its own frustrations.
I very nearly made some drastic changes in my life then, borne less out of a logical progression of "this is the problem and these will fix it" than "everything else is crap and if I blow the rest of it away at least I'm starting fresh". I've done similar things in my life before. But while it was a close thing, probably closer than I'd like to admit, I'm a little bit proud of myself. Because instead of blowing up my life, I made a deal with myself that I would try to find less drastic and more-likely-to-directly-help ways of solving my problems.
I bring this up for two reasons. One is that it illustrates a theme I've returned to several times in my birthday posts - that I actually rather like getting older, because I learn things like the self-knowledge to recognize a destructive pattern and the patience to create a plan to work through it instead. And the other is that today was my deadline, of a sort. At the nadir point, I remember looking in the mirror and thinking "I'm nearly thirty. What am I going to do if I hit that point and things are still this awful? Do I really want to be thirty years old and have no sense of my own identity?" And I thought, "Well, that's a year and a half away. If things haven't gotten better by then, thirty seems as good a time as any to clear the slate and make a fresh start."
But they did. (They got better by my twenty-ninth birthday, thankfully, and have continued to improve.) And I won't. And I'm very grateful that I was/am old enough and smart enough to avoid that pitfall. Even if it took me nearly three decades to learn.
On that subject, I don't think I can overstate how much picking up guitar has helped with all of that. I have an identity now (and I'm starting to reach the skill-level where I don't feel like a total poseur in referring to myself as a "musician", either). It's given me a complementary skill to practice singing against. And I've finally found a pursuit that, while enthusiasm ebbs and flows as with any hobby, it's constant enough that I don't find myself setting it aside for months or years at a time.
It helps that I'm good at it, too. Not great - I have a long, long way to go before I come anywhere near that point - but good enough to impress my guitar teachers, my friends, and even some of the people who wander by while I'm busking. Good enough that I can look at the tab to "Diamonds and Rust" and go "Well, that'll take a while to learn, but I'm certain I will learn it, eventually." Good enough that I can play a song I remember my mother playing and singing to me when I was very young, and hear her singing through me - me, who never felt like my voice would match up to hers.
Things are not perfect, nor will they ever be. But they are much, much better. And I have far more joy in the present and hope for the future than I did then.
As "turning thirty" goes, I think "joy and hope" is a pretty good note to hold, don't you?
cyranoIt seems almost a self-congratulatory point to start at, but my friend's comment frankly captures my own sentiments, too. I've long since come to terms with the fact that my present self, while seeming confident and collected and smart, will seem painfully out of touch and naive five years from now. But it's also nice to think that in those five years I'll have grown enough to feel that way about my consciousness now.
For a long time (so long that I can't even remember where I first read it), my favorite metaphor for the aging process has been that of the Matryoshka doll - each year adding another layer, but all of the previous layers still contained within. And while that still seems accurate, if somewhat imprecise, I find myself wondering if it's more along the lines of a continuum - where future versions of yourself exist, and perhaps even have an effect on, your current self, just as your past ones do.
Bah. This is what I get for waiting until 10:30 the night before my birthday to finally try to write a post. Metaphysical musings that probably don't make much sense. Perhaps I'd best stick to the 'past in review' model, then.
In retrospect, twenty-eight (especially the latter half of it) was something of a crisis year for me. As with so many things, it seemed to stem largely from my sense of identity, or lack thereof. I'd had little luck finding a career-type job here in Arizona, I'd dabbled in various artistic endeavours but never long or deeply enough to properly consider myself an artist, I wanted desperately to write but couldn't seem to motivate myself to do so regularly. I had few friends in the area and none that needed any particular kind of help or support. I had little luck finding opportunities to sing; even karaoke opportunities were practically nonexistent. So that left...being a wife. Which, while pleasant, was hardly in line with how I saw myself, and certainly not without its own frustrations.
I very nearly made some drastic changes in my life then, borne less out of a logical progression of "this is the problem and these will fix it" than "everything else is crap and if I blow the rest of it away at least I'm starting fresh". I've done similar things in my life before. But while it was a close thing, probably closer than I'd like to admit, I'm a little bit proud of myself. Because instead of blowing up my life, I made a deal with myself that I would try to find less drastic and more-likely-to-directly-help ways of solving my problems.
I bring this up for two reasons. One is that it illustrates a theme I've returned to several times in my birthday posts - that I actually rather like getting older, because I learn things like the self-knowledge to recognize a destructive pattern and the patience to create a plan to work through it instead. And the other is that today was my deadline, of a sort. At the nadir point, I remember looking in the mirror and thinking "I'm nearly thirty. What am I going to do if I hit that point and things are still this awful? Do I really want to be thirty years old and have no sense of my own identity?" And I thought, "Well, that's a year and a half away. If things haven't gotten better by then, thirty seems as good a time as any to clear the slate and make a fresh start."
But they did. (They got better by my twenty-ninth birthday, thankfully, and have continued to improve.) And I won't. And I'm very grateful that I was/am old enough and smart enough to avoid that pitfall. Even if it took me nearly three decades to learn.
On that subject, I don't think I can overstate how much picking up guitar has helped with all of that. I have an identity now (and I'm starting to reach the skill-level where I don't feel like a total poseur in referring to myself as a "musician", either). It's given me a complementary skill to practice singing against. And I've finally found a pursuit that, while enthusiasm ebbs and flows as with any hobby, it's constant enough that I don't find myself setting it aside for months or years at a time.
It helps that I'm good at it, too. Not great - I have a long, long way to go before I come anywhere near that point - but good enough to impress my guitar teachers, my friends, and even some of the people who wander by while I'm busking. Good enough that I can look at the tab to "Diamonds and Rust" and go "Well, that'll take a while to learn, but I'm certain I will learn it, eventually." Good enough that I can play a song I remember my mother playing and singing to me when I was very young, and hear her singing through me - me, who never felt like my voice would match up to hers.
Things are not perfect, nor will they ever be. But they are much, much better. And I have far more joy in the present and hope for the future than I did then.
As "turning thirty" goes, I think "joy and hope" is a pretty good note to hold, don't you?
