26

My grandma asked me on wednesday how it felt to begin my second quarter-century.  She has a knack for asking questions of sublimated morbidity.  I joke with my friends that now I just need to round up and say I'm 30 for the next four years . . . and we all know that jokes are always half-true, or they wouldn't be funny.  I have friends now who are 30+, which is awesome and strange.  That fact might mark as much of a turning point in my life as anything else.  

. . . And I realize that 30 is just a dumb number that we lend far more significance than it deserves.  Still.  It just forces you into this state of realism, that you can't even fake the blissful ignorance of youth anymore.  And that's fine.  I never was a fan of blissful ignorance anyway.  . . . only it was a nice excuse to keep as a fall-back.

It's funny how this is turning out to be one of the best times of my life.  I've got awesome friends.  They bought me a lot of shots the other night, and then a few drove me home in my own car.  It was the best birthday I've had in a long time.  . . . and the worst day after as well.  

One note of maturity I've realized is how I no longer feel the imposition of "expected milestones" tugging at my soul.  In college I always remember feeling the weight of imperfection for never having held a career job, never having been in love, never having seen this, or done that, or been somewhere that everyone told me I should have been.  Now I've checked a sufficient number of these things off of my list to realize that a check-list is a damned idiotic way to live one's life.  I still want all those things; even the one's I supposedly had.  Just, now, I hope to God that they amount to more than a check mark to bring up at parties in order to feel important.

One thing I've noticed that I hate about the pace of my day-to-day life is that I never have the time (or never forced the time) to appreciate where, or who, I've come to be.  I get bogged down in the demands of school, and family, and friends, losing track of the simple fact that I have every reason to pause occasionally I think about how good things are.  

I was going to get things done today.  I've got an absurdly hard genetics mid-term to do.  I need to memorize the markings of the 206 bones that comprise the human skeleton.  There's a lot of "fun" books, that I plan to read more for personal demands than simple enjoyment.  I could try to get ahead on my algebra course.  I've got emails that I need to send.  Articles to look up.  

But, the sun's out, and the flowers are enjoying the Spring.  So instead I'm content to consider things as they are.  If I've picked up any wisdom, it would be simple as to think that nothing is lost, and that it's been a quarter century for a good year to come into bloom . . . .