Thirty.

So next week I turn 30.

I’m sure most people my age share the same mixed feelings about hitting this milestone that I do. As a teenager, the age of 30 seemed one that was distant, unknowable. Even as I hit my twenties, I only held a vague concept of what it is that a 30 year old does on a day to day basis. I think, as a 15-20 year old, I had a lot of anxieties about hitting this age. What would I be like as an “adult”? How old would I look? Would I still have the same dork hobbies that I do now? Which friends would I still have?

The answer is both simpler and more complex than I envisioned, I think.

For instance, let’s start off with a simple one: hobbies. I thought, for sure, I would no longer be playing video games. It’s not that I ever wanted to stop playing video games, but I thought there was some threshold I would cross where I would stop playing them and never look back. The fact that I own an DS, a PS3, XBOX360, Wii, and am planning on owning consoles probably forever has shattered my fears for good, I think. That I married a woman tolerant of my video game playing is a good thing.

I am, however, getting tired of going to the movies. I still love cinema, especially foreign cinema, but the big summer movies are become more and more distasteful to me, and going to a theater on opening night now holds zero appeal to me. Somewhere during the last few years, the though of waiting in line to enter a packed theater where drunken Broheims would be screaming and ruining the movie for me lost its flavor. I don’t think there’s any going back to that one. Though I understand why cinema owners and filmmakers reject the idea of on-demand day-of releases for movies, at this point, when a movie opens, I welcome the notion of having 5-6 friends over and paying 30 bucks for it. There are just too many crappy things to deal with at a theater now. Most of the people in the theater (friends included, actually) check their cell phones constantly, and the light/ringers are distracting as hell.

I’ve always enjoyed reading, but reading for pleasure is something that I’ve done more and more as the years have gone on. This one will only increase, I think.

I did think I’d be married by 30, but I didn’t think I’d spend less than a year of my twenties being married. Not that I was in a rush, but somehow I think I expected, when I was 15, that I’d be married by 25 (25 seemed like it was so freakin’ old).

I certainly never expected to be living in Northern California, but I’m glad I took the chance and moved - or lived somewhere else besides SoCal (especially Orange County).

As far as friends go, it’s interesting to me to consider who still is a close friend, and who I’ve grown distant from. Some friends changed, making it unbearable for me to be around them anymore. But that also could apply to me (and probably does). I think my tolerance for certain things just kind of vanished, and some people pushed my buttons a little too hard. One of the common things my family shares is an uncanny ability to hold grudges for an inordinate amount of time…and my anger and hurt at some people run too deep for me to just forgive and forget anymore. There are, of course, people I really wished I was better friends with. Sometimes I’ll see a group of people I knew in college post pictures of how they’re hanging out, and I’ll get a twinge of regret mixed with nostalgia. But there’s nothing you can really do about any of those things at this point. I used to tell my students that I only kept a few friends from high school - that my clique dispersed. I think that they thought that meant I had huge fallings out, but really, people just scattered to the four winds (myself included now). I love running into old high school friends now, but that wasn’t always the case. Aiko is the opposite - her main circle of friends is almost exactly the same as it was when she was 15. I am both jealous of and perplexed at this, but that just demonstrates how the world turns out sometimes.

At any rate, I have no problem turning 30. 40, though…who knows how I’m going to feel then.