I am thirty years old today.
(Well, I'm actually not, as I write this. I am writing it early so I can go drinking Monday night instead of writing a blog post about being 30.)
There are things to grouse about, I guess. It really is hard to believe my twenties went by so fast. My current career trajectory is "Oh good, I haven't been laid off this week." I'm losing my hair and I'm more fragile than I used to be -- asthma and allergies and I haven't had this many headaches since my teens and a couple weeks ago I started getting dizzy spells again though I'm pretty sure that was just because I was using a damn expired inhaler.
On the other hand, I feel good. I'm in better shape all the time -- I'm tempted to say "best shape of my life", but on the other hand in college I lived at a seven-thousand-foot elevation and biked everywhere. Then again, my waist was four inches bigger around then than it is now.
I've got a nice house, a wonderful fiancée, toys that keep me busy and challenged, and ideas for what I'm going to try next. Maybe I'll narrate audiobooks. Maybe I'll finally make that RPG that's been puttering about in the back of my mind since high school. Maybe I'll help build an art project with my uncle and then he'll draw my comic book about that time I went to the ER a few years back.
Neil Gaiman gave a great speech this year about following your dreams -- there's a mountain, he said, and even if you can't get there yet, just try and take one step closer in everything you do. Put like that? My life looks pretty good. I may not be where I want to be, but I'm always moving closer, a little bit at a time.
Plenty of time ahead of me. Hell, the amount of time between now and the day I have to renew my driver's license is longer than my entire life to date. (Arizona: not all bad.)
And always doing something to move a little closer to the mountain? I guess that's one reason I started blogging daily (or 5 days a week with Zappa posts 7 days a week, or whatever it is I'm keeping to right now). It's just a thing to do. It's discipline. I started working out, and I started writing something every day. (Well, not started writing something every day, because I've been doing that all my life. But started posting something here every day.) People seem to like the stuff I write. It makes me feel good. Maybe someday I'll be able to do something creative and make money at it; in the meantime, at least I'm keeping some measure of schedule and focus, however small.
And hey, thanks to the people who read this. Thanks still more to the people who write things to me. (Maybe I should take that animation of Mickey Mouse violating Silent Bob off my contact page. I'm 30 years old.)