On growing up

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My twenties are coming to a close in a few months.  I'm okay with that.  In fact, I've enjoyed telling people lately that I'm almost 30. 

I feel older.  I feel a bit more wise.  For lack of better words, I feel more adult.

But, ironically, the older I get, the less I want "adult" things.  As a newly minted college graduate, I had goals -- specific "deadlines" in mind for earning an MBA, getting married, having kids and buying a house.  I had visions of being a successful businesswoman with picture perfect kids in the picture perfect prep school.

Who knows if I could have ever achieved those goals.  Likely not.

But, now that I'm almost 30, I don't want any of that.  At all.   

They say that my generation suffers from "delayed development".  Sociologists have traditionally marked adulthood by completing 5 milestones:

1. Completing school
2. Leaving home
3. Becoming financially independent
4. Marrying
5. Having children

(Note: I assume buying your first house is somewhere in the mix)

In 1960, 77% of women and 65% of men had checked off all 5 milestones by the age of 30.  As of 2000, only 50% of women and 33% of men had done so.

I'm 3 out of 5 for milestones, and I'm not sure I ever want to complete the list.  

I originally thought I just had "Peter Pan" syndrome (i.e., never wanting to grow up), which heightened during my time in San Francisco.  The Bold Italic sums up life there perfectly:

People talk a lot of shit about this city's Peter Pan Syndrome, but the truth is, many of us live here because San Francisco fully embraces a unique breed of youthfulness, ridiculousness, and willingness to experiment like no other urban center we know. We're a city of ageless dreamers and costume collectors, a place where folks will back a Kickstarter campaign to bronze Jeremy Fish's Silly Pink Bunny just because. We're the home of Bay to Breakers and the start of Burning Man, and the city where Halloween is on par with national holidays.

It's true.  I have some Peter Pan in me, but it's more than that.  

I now think my changing goals and frame of mind are actually signs of maturity.

I used to want what everyone else wanted, which Hunter S. Thompson aptly describes in a note penned to a friend, Hume Logan, captured in the book, Letters of Note:

“To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles…” 

And indeed, that IS the question: whether to float with the tide, or to swim for a goal. It is a choice we must all make consciously or unconsciously at one time in our lives. So few people understand this! Think of any decision you’ve ever made which had a bearing on your future: I may be wrong, but I don’t see how it could have been anything but a choice however indirect — between the two things I’ve mentioned: the floating or the swimming.

Now, my goals are more short-term based on the most recent version of myself.  As Thompson describes below, it's the most rational thing to do since we change as people with every new experience:

Every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience. As your experiences differ and multiply, you become a different man, and hence your perspective changes. This goes on and on. Every reaction is a learning process; every significant experience alters your perspective.

 So it would seem foolish, would it not, to adjust our lives to the demands of a goal we see from a different angle every day? How could we ever hope to accomplish anything other than galloping neurosis? 

I may not have the most "adult" life based on assets or dependents on my insurance plan, but I've gained something more than that -- the ability to want different things for myself than my peers and the realization that the person I am today will not be the same person I am a year from now.

So, hear hear, to new experiences and a new version of myself in my 30s.

My Modern Met