Leaving the Roaring 20s for the Great Depression

[d_aulnoy]

"I'm going to be 40!"

"When?"

"Someday!"

- "When Harry Met Sally" (1989) (I was ten, people, and 40 seemed aeons away.)

The "when" in my case would be exactly ten years and three days from now.  First, I have to get past 30.

Generally speaking, my outlook on aging is positive: I don't privilege pimpled youth, and I quite look forward to being a venerable crone.  I plan to carry a sword-cane, and to wear my hair in either an unnaturally colored lacquered bob or a Gibson Girl pompadour.  I shall take up smoking again (or, more likely, to buy a holder for my electronic cigarette that will allow me to punctuate my statements with bold gestures and plumes of glycerol).    I will swathe myself in crimson velvet and pronounce strange and indecipherable advice cloaked as poetry.  Bad poetry.  I will be crazy Graunty d_aulnoy , whom all the kids want to visit with, because I will tell them inappropriate stories and teach them how to do their eyeliner right.  The thing is, there's a good 40 years between then and now, and while I may glorify decrepitude, I don't really feel strongly one way or the other about what comes in between.  I suppose, like much else, it's what you make of it.

So!  Care to tell me about your last land-mark birthday, and how you approached it?  And care to tell me of your images of the 30's?  You can tell me about the historical '30s if you actually lived through them, or your own thirties as you experience(d) them or your image of the platonic 30 if you have the same fantasies concerning that period that I have towards my probable future as a septuagenarian.  No matter the approach, I need some solidarity!  Pondering the Art Deco movement makes me feel much better about it all (and might actually be a fulfilling and aesthetically pleasing life path to follow for a decade or so), but I'd like a little more to go on ....

Comments

[brigidsblest.livejournal.com]

I plan to carry a sword-cane,

Given health issues that I'm sure my upcoming visit to the rheumatologist will ascertain are either osteoarthritis or osteoporosis (and probably both), I was also planning to acquire a sword-cane, as it seems I'll end up needing one before another ten years or so has passed. (I'll be 42 in July, and I'm having problems with my hips and knees.)

But then I found out that sword-canes are considered concealed weapons where I live, and are thus illegal (the blade length is also illegal), so I shall revert to my Irish roots and buy a blackthorn cane instead. It'll be perfect for drumming hooligans over the head with, and shaking at kids as I yell at them to get off of my lawn.

[rosefox]

I partied hard when I turned 30 last June. The entire weekend was party. It was fantastic. I went to a terrific concert, as has become a birthday tradition; I had dinner out at a favorite restaurant that was about to close, followed by dessert at my mom's place; I dragged my friends off to invade the crazy Korean spa waaaaay out in the middle of nowhere in Flushing, which is also going to be a birthday tradition. Friends visited from San Francisco and Omaha, staying with us, so even when we weren't out with friends, the house was full of lovely people. The nice thing about a weekend-long party was that pretty much everyone I wanted to attend was able to come to at least something. This year I may be doing two weekend-long parties, in fact, as one person who's very dear to me can't make the weekend of the 13th and another can't make the weekend of the 27th, and the obvious solution is to spend both weekends partying like mad.

(I've also suggested quite seriously to sinboy that we get married every five years or so. Any excuse for a party!)

I'm really loving being 30. When I was in my 20s, I had a lot of problems around feeling like no one took me seriously enough, as though I didn't get to be a grown-up. Now that I'm 30, I am very definitely a grown-up and it's a lot easier to believe that people will at least listen all the way through what I have to say before telling me I'm wrong. My friend karenbynight, who's a few years older than I am, wrote last year: "I've reached a point that instead of feeling kind of old for youth culture, I feel kind of young for the rest of my life and the rest of the world. I mean, I'm looking forward to it, but there's a whole lot left to do, and a lot of time left to do it in. :-)" Being 30 feels just like that for me. It's a time of coming out of that Saturn return introspection and starting to look outwards again, shifting away from "Who am I?" and into "Okay, I have something of a handle on who I am and I'm content to leave it at that for the moment, now what can I do, and what do I choose to do?". It feels great.

I was a little startled, though, when a friend handed me a brochure for an English country dance workshop in August, and I said, "Oh look, they have scholarships for people age 15–30... but by August I'll be 31. Damn. Ack, I'll be 31!" So I guess I haven't quite gotten into the idea of being in my thirties, or being a thirtysomething. I'm sure that will come in time, though.

I hope your 30s are wonderful!

[fjm.livejournal.com]

40 might have been memorable, but just before it was my ten years gluten free, and I celebrated that instead, with a massive party full of gf cookies donated by the manufacturers.

I celebrated 40 in a sauna with 20 beautiful women from Finncon!

[owlfish]

My 30th birthday was an afterthought and a disappointment, almost by necessity. I'd moved countries three weeks earlier and hadn't had time to really start re-establishing contact with existing friends, let alone making new ones. I went out to eat with C. and a friend-couple and they were lovely, but we didn't even know them as well then.

[heathencorp.livejournal.com]

A very wise friend of mine once said that turning thirty was like a relief to her-- the twenties are sort of expected to be full of parties and dating and social wilderness, and she wasn't like that, so when she turned 30 and it was allowed to be past, and she was allowed to be settled and defined, she felt a huge weight lifted off of her. That's how I'm seeing my upcoming 30s that're facing me down next year. I can stop feeling like I'm missing out on being 20-odd even though I don't want to be a Girl Gone Wild and I have no interest in bumming around bars trying to get laid.

25 was less horrible to me than turning 27, but I don't do well with sevens, and that year I was emotionally unstable, hormonally all over the place, involved in an affair and was hit by a car, so it was an all-around sort of roughness. I celebrated my Quarter of a Century the way I should have celebrated my 21st (except then, I was dating a guilt-inflicting teetotaller who ruined all that fun), with lots of drinking with my friends and being silly. And I totally got a whole pub for that birthday-- it opened on the day of, and gave me all my drinks for free.

Your image of old age is similar to mine: I plan to keep adding bigger and more ornate jewelry until I'm all bent under the weight of it, and to carry around a cigarette holder, whether I ever take up smoking or not, and to keep hennaing my hair so that when it's totally white it'll be dyed bright orange and pinned up in weird curls and braids. I'll be constantly telling the girls how to be cooler, and when I hit 85, I give myself permission to stop trying to filter what I say (a constant struggle these days!). I'm sure I'll sound entirely insane, but by that time, insane or not, I think I'll have earned it.

~;)