I Read 94 Clickbait Essays About Turning 30: Did I Learn Anything?
Let’s agree that in 2016, there are 3 basic categories of essays one can publish on the internet:
- “Why I’m Leaving New York”
- “Things I Learned (or Didn’t Learn) Before Turning 30”
- Everything else
I penned my “Leaving New York” essay last May, so I thought I’d churn out the “Turning 30” essay just in time for my 30th birthday this Sunday. But then I asked myself, “Hey, if I’ll be back partying in Manhattan, brazenly repeating mistakes of my recent past, have I learned anything worth sharing?”
Meaning: I can only aspire to the progressive optimism of Lindsay Lohan (best known for her astute Brexit commentary) who just gave a calm, propitious, interview to Vanity Fair: “I am very excited to share my personal experiences in life and how to overcome obstacles. I hope that my words will connect with those who need some guidance when [or] if they are in a tough place.”
Me too, Lindsay. Me too. But first, a little research.
Our Obsession with Turning 30
Did you know: “Turning 30“ is the name of a poorly-reviewed Bollywood Film, and it has it’s own board on Pinterest. Elle magazine has an entire This is 30 vertical. So does Thought Catalog. And the Huffington Post. Vice doesn’t have as rich a collection as I’d have hoped, but they do have a piece called “Waving Goodbye to my Youth on Acid” that follows a man named Gavin who takes a big ole tab of acid on his 30th birthday and attends a music industry conference in Montreal.
While women seem to be the most prolific, there are entire genres of Turning 30 essays: Finance. Science. Even satire. Meanwhile, on Yahoo answers, homosexual men ponder: Is turning 30 really gay death? While a writer in OUT magazine eulogizes his 20’s.
By far the most common title is a variation on “30 Lessons I learned Before 30,” but some of my other favorite titles include: 10 Things I Don’t Give a Sh*t About Now That I’m 29, Why Olivia Wilde Is Psyched To Turn 30, Happy Birthday, How Turning 30 Taught Me That I Already Have My Shit Together, Kate Middleton! Here’s Why You’ll Love Your 30s, and of course, Thirty Is the New Everything.
All in all, I read 94 pieces on turning 3o. Spend time with these essays, and two basic themes evolve:
- My 20’s were crazzzzy. Booze and cocaine is bad. (i.e. Time to grow up!)
- 30’s aren’t as bad as you think. (i.e. the sex/parenthood/career is great!)
What I’m trying to say is: we might as well walk into a vinyl party with my parent’s copy of “Rumors,” cause there is no way my “Turning 30” essay is going to offer you anything original.
Unless… that’s the thesis of this essay itself. Stick with me… cause I think I did learn something.
Turning 30/90
In 2003, I was a closeted gay teen in the suburbs of Illinois, who — at 17 — had just received his first iPod, and rushed to fill it with essentials from my iTunes library: Dave Matthews, Jay-Z, the James Bond collection, and… RENT.
Despite a budding reputation as a “theater kid,” RENT still had to remain my secret. I just couldn’t risk my soccer buddies knowing I could sing along to every word of a “gay” musical (despite the fact these same boys seemed intent that every truth or dare session involved us taking off our clothes). But at that time, when I would disappear on weekends to run paths through the prairie for hours — alone and confused — the words of Jonathan Larson felt like a bohemian version of Moroni’s golden plates, delivered personally, to me, in America’s heartland.
RENT was sexy and glamorous — building a life through art in New York! But it was also dangerous: what if capitalistic structures of society crush our ability to connect as human beings? Also: if I come out, will I get AIDS? These questions swirled through my naive brain as a teenager.
However, while abusing Limewire to download these pornographic ballads, another song made its way onto my playlist: 30/90, the opening number to his Jonathan Larson’s autobiographical first musical, Tick, Tick… Boom! The lyrics go:
They’re singing, “Happy Birthday” /
You just wanna lay down and cry /
Not just another birthday /
It’s 30/90 /
Why can’t you stay 29 /
Hell, you still feel like you’re 22 /
Turn thirty, 1990 /
Bang! You’re dead /
What can you do?
I remember going, “Ok, wait a second, holy shit: we can STAND UP to fight AIDS, but turning 30… you drop dead and it’s… ‘what can you do?’” This was the first time I ever consciously thought a person could reasonably be afraid of turning 30.
“Fuck that,” I thought. “Maybe I’ll suck dick, but I’m never getting old.” I deleted the song from my iPod and forgot about it until I saw the revival of Tick, Tick… Boom!, the “story of an aspiring composer questioning his life choices on the eve of his thirtieth birthday,” started previews Off-Broadway this month, just as I’m about to hit the big 3.0 myself.
So that (almost) brings me to my point of understanding…
Turning 30 In “The Real World”
While listening to RENT at 17, I felt my experience was wholly unique. I didn’t have the context to understand that millions of other kids across the globe were grappling with extremely similar feelings. Yet as I absorbed more art, met more people, read more stories, the past 13 years have been a slow but steady unravelling of that isolated misunderstanding. And… it’s not just me.
In preparation for this piece, I put out an open call to Facebook, asking friends for their opinions on turning 30. It was a pleasant surprise to find each and every reaction relatable, including those regretting the “unnecessary pressures we put on ourselves in our early and mid 20s (social media doesn’t help).” Another friend admitted there’s a certain switch that clicks, wherein: “I own a lot more of my mistakes and genuinely try to learn from them. I listen to others more, and value what they say.”
Because perhaps it’s something in our brains, our culture, or merely our numerical superstition, but 30 has become an arbitrary (nonetheless crucial) inflection point where — if we’re lucky — we learn to trust the perspective of other’s experiences as equal to our own. And while those experiences might differ by race, class, gender, and geography, we all gather to be judged equally by 30. This has both positive and negative ramifications.
One guy noted that, “Shortly after I turned 30, I had dinner with a friend of my family: we were a 30 year-old, 60 year-old, and 90-year old — all checking out the waiter.” However, another complained, “I realize that at this point I’ll never be the youngest anything, or likely even a particularly remarkable anything. I was born pretty close to the top of Privilege Mountain, and now even I’m too old with too many people ahead of me on the career curve to stand out.”
Sitting here on the precipice of 30, I can perfectly relate to the impending doom of admitting, “Damnit, I’ve become a (failed) archetype.” Allow me to illustrate through this graph:
As a 23 year old, I would have found this graph depressing. Now, I find it (mostly) liberating. Because while the macabre glamor of The Real World was a serious aspiration in many a dorm room—“Oh, you’d be PERFECT. Make an audition video!”—now, I would find it more difficult to engage in such conflict-seeking behavior. Granted, we all stumble on and off this path — some will never arrive at empathy. Still, as experiences widen, empathy comes more natural.
Perhaps that’s why the “lessons” imparted in these “Turning 30” essays feel so derivative: we expect a great climax, but instead arrive after 690 months on this earth to find that we can achieve success TOGETHER with our personalities intact.
Because just as Jonathan Larson admits he’s terrified of becoming another failed artist in Tick, Tick… Boom!, reaching 30 means we won’t face this fear alone. At least until we’ve failed our way to 40.
