Turning 32

“Birthday Cake” by Flickr user Will Clayton, CC-BY-2.0

This is not a birthday post. Well, maybe it is because it emerges from the fact that when I wrote it it was my birthday and I was thinking about these things. Also, I had no Internet, so I just typed this on my iPad and let it sit there until I could come back to it.

So let’s close our eyes and pretend it’s June 5 again…

Somehow, thinking about turning 32 today made me think about John Mayer’s song “83,” from his 2001 album Room for Squares. If you’ve never heard, it’s a song where John Mayer waxes nostalgic about being 6 in 1983 and the simplicity of things as they used to be. Maybe it was the coincidence of 3′s (my mind often finds patterns in things that a lot of people don’t really care about) but I kept on humming the song in my head until I decided to just sit down and type this post.

I’m not about to wax nostalgic about wanting to be younger, or wanting to relive an earlier period in my life. On the contrary, I’m feeling pretty good about my 30s. I am not about to romanticize what my life used to be in my 20s; it was lots of fun, but I also spent a lot of time figuring out who the heck I was. As far as I’m concerned I’m still working on that. And maybe we never really stop figuring that out. (Is that what being in your 30s is all about?)

As for me, this is where I am today:

At 32 I live in Houston, Texas. Years ago, I would have never imagined myself living in the state of Texas. I’m a liberal who had some liberal stereotypes (heck, I had them about Kansas too, and I made it through three years of KC, unscathed), and frankly, I dreamed of moving to NYC when I was done with school. But things change, and my family situation brought me to Texas. Right now, we’re loving Houston. It’s not New York, but I only want one New York in my life.

By 32 I have lived in three different U.S. states, and one U.S. colony. I’ve also done plenty of traveling, thanks to my academic career: Hawaii, London, Calgary, Vienna, Mexico…and I hope we don’t stop.

I’ve worked at three different schools, and two of them were research universities. I’ve created and taught college-level courses, although only one of them is a literature course I’ve created. Teaching that course changed me, and I wish I could teach literature again. But I also had the chance to work in student support, and I enjoyed working with my writers day in and day out.

I have realized that dreams can change. People change, feelings change, desires and needs change. Our dreams can change, too. My dream of becoming a tenure-track professor has morphed into something else entirely. That doesn’t mean that change is easy. But admitting to myself that I’ve changed is a big step, and I’m glad I’m on the other side.

I have realized that some dreams will never change. Just recently I moved to Houston, leaving behind one job I enjoyed tremendously and leaping into the void of uncertainty. But even though unemployment scares the crap out of me, I am also choosing to see it as an opportunity and try my hand at something I’ve been thinking about for a while. (I’m not saying everyone who is unemployed should do this. I’m just saying that this is the approach I took. Unemployment is NOT a laughing matter. We were also fortunate to have the financial means so that I could try something that might not be profitable at first.) So I’m taking the plunge and resolved to dedicate more time to writing. Writing is something that has always meant a lot to me, and I was fortunate enough to spend the past two years working with graduate student writers. Now I have the chance to dedicate myself to that, to take it seriously and go from teenage fantasy to reality.

I have a child. Unlike some people, who dream their whole lives about being parents, I focused more on my career. Now, almost four years since I found out I was expecting, I have the brightest, cutest kid. (I’m biased, so don’t take it personal.) She is a little adult in a toddler’s body, and she marvels me.

At 32, I feel like I can do so many things, and it doesn’t mean I have to do all of them, or that I can’t do one if I do the other. I feel a lot more possibility in my 30s than I did in my 20s. (Maybe it’s the medication? Who knows.) But I do know that I’ve chilled out a lot when it comes to the day-to-day craziness and uncertainty that can happen at any given moment.

Me at 32 is embracing a new career path, and it scares me but it’s also exciting. Jumping onto the freelance wagon is crazy. But jumping is also freeing. I always liked being able to create my own schedule, and lately I worried a lot about not having time to explore my own writing and research. And if it doesn’t work out? I can always try something else. Four years ago I would not have dared consider the possibility of trying something else. I’m going with what makes me happy right now.

As I wrote this post, I had John Mayer’s “83″ on repeat, if you can believe that. One line that stands out to me as I type is this: