Hello readers! It sure may have seemed like I've completely forgotten about the existence of this page. Oops did I say forgotten? Guess the floodgates to a whole new league of old-age jokes have been opened. (And don't you dare!) Anyway, there'd been just too much happening for me to get a cup of 'chahhh' and pensively sit down and collect my thoughts. Contemplation had damn well been a luxury last month!
June, as it happens, is my birthday month. Usually, I get all jittery and excited, maybe two weeks leading up to the big day — the day I squished my way out a rather dark and eerie alley into the vast world out there, to become a person of my own. That said, it's not like I expect a big surprise party or friends writing long birthday notes on Facebook to celebrate my coming into being. I'm good with some exotic dinner and doll-up routine and a quiet reflection of who I am now and where I'm headed. ( And big, expensive presents couldn't hurt either.)
But ever since I turned thirty, it seems to me like the clock started going tick-tick a wee bit louder. Birthdays seem to be lurking around the corner, waiting to loom over me like a sloppily-done surprise scene from a horror movie. And before you know it, you're in the middle of your mid-thirties, slouching in the same birthday PJs that you've worn for four consecutive birthdays, collecting the remains of a bottle of Kingfisher from the previous night that's exploded all over your freezer. And you can't help but wonder, "Gee, so the wise strands of grey in your hair definitely don't make you brighter."
OK, that's a sad visual.
Now that the mist of my birthday duh-uh moments have cleared, I realize that sure I have not got my book published as yet or taken my blog to newer heights or struck an all-time high on my popularity index. I sure don't have any birthday wisdom to proclaim as my own so no thirty life lessons from a thirty-something... I haven't even mastered some of the "life-altering beauty hacks" that social media throws your way every now and then (e.g. how to make a perfect wing to your eyeliner with a credit card). But still, I can vouch for one thing.
I am not the same person I was in my twenties.
Not to say that that's something revelationary...in the physical sense or otherwise. I am married. With a three-year old daughter. Running a household. Naturally, things are bound to be radically different from the time when monthly salaries were meant to be spent on clothes and shoes and cooking was meant to be done at luxury and as a demo of "Oh look how independent and multi-faceted I am". What I mean is all the things that seemed trivial in my twenties, such as what's happening in my neighborhood, what's happening to my own gender in another home, what's happening to other lives beyond my world, seem infinitely important now. I no longer react to something shocking that happened to a certain someone in a different country, in a different culture or in a different situation from me as, "Oh, that's sad. But what's that got to do with my life?" In fact, I am shaken by it. It feels like the world around me has a brand new context. I am also learning how to get a balanced view of life before voicing strong opinions. I am drawn to documentaries more than commercial movies. (Not saying that I don't have guilty pleasure movies and reality TV moments.) I constantly have ridiculously high expectations of myself. And yet, I can also revel in the in-between phase, when nothing significant ever seems to happen.
But while we're on the subject of expectations, I also know for a fact that if the scrawny-faced, bushy-browed me from the 90s were to time-hop and see my life right now, she'd have a bunch of complaints. As I can imagine, they would be:
1. OK, so this is our storage area. Where'd the rest of our sprawling apartment go?
2. I told you I wanted to walk into a wardrobe and smell the light mist of vanilla-lily perfume and feel the floaty, fairytale-like fabric on my fingers. Didn't quite picture trying to walk into a wardrobe and have bundles of clothes knock my winds out by going straight for my face!
3. And how about you spend less time showing off pictures of your cooking adventures on Facebook and invite some real friends over instead! Cos nobody really cares about how floaty your floating island is if they're not actually diving in it. But whatever.
4. And you still say 'whatever' a lot? Tut tut.
5. Anywho, can you call me a limo now? Being 12 looks way better.
But then twelve-year olds have a flair for drama.
That said, if there's anything that I'd like to tell my twelve-year old self, about my life in the thirty-somethings, it's this.
Yes, the thirty-somethings are not all fun. They're scary shit. They remind you of all the places that you could've reached, all the decisions you could've reversed. Even the 'small stuff' such as party places that are inaccessible to you cos you are now also a parent find their spotlight in the thirties. And you think you may have forgotten what your reckless twenty-something version looks like by some mental manipulation of ageing. But you can count on social media to reinforce it back to you as a memory you'd lovvve to have refreshed. (Five Years Ago Today, you were in a rooftop lounge, stuffing your face with jacket potatoes and not worried about whether your little one has wandered off too far.)
But then there is a silver lining. That those things don't matter any more. Cos life is constantly changing and when you get to your thirties, you'd have gained enough confidence and strength of will to chase all the dreams worth having... Sure, you probably haven't fulfilled your heightened sense of self — that imaginary person who first surfaced when you were writing the answer to ,"What do you want to be when you grow up?" in school. You're probably not even close to the more realistic version of him/her that you were trained to write about when you were at a mid-level job. ("Where do you see yourself five years from now?")
But whatever it may be, for most of us, thirties is when it begins to feel like we're getting our whacko selves figured out. It's the beginning of a different sort of adventure; when life gets more real.
And all I have to say is bring it on!
June, as it happens, is my birthday month. Usually, I get all jittery and excited, maybe two weeks leading up to the big day — the day I squished my way out a rather dark and eerie alley into the vast world out there, to become a person of my own. That said, it's not like I expect a big surprise party or friends writing long birthday notes on Facebook to celebrate my coming into being. I'm good with some exotic dinner and doll-up routine and a quiet reflection of who I am now and where I'm headed. ( And big, expensive presents couldn't hurt either.)
 |
| Birthday Eve 2015 |
OK, that's a sad visual.
Now that the mist of my birthday duh-uh moments have cleared, I realize that sure I have not got my book published as yet or taken my blog to newer heights or struck an all-time high on my popularity index. I sure don't have any birthday wisdom to proclaim as my own so no thirty life lessons from a thirty-something... I haven't even mastered some of the "life-altering beauty hacks" that social media throws your way every now and then (e.g. how to make a perfect wing to your eyeliner with a credit card). But still, I can vouch for one thing.
I am not the same person I was in my twenties.
Not to say that that's something revelationary...in the physical sense or otherwise. I am married. With a three-year old daughter. Running a household. Naturally, things are bound to be radically different from the time when monthly salaries were meant to be spent on clothes and shoes and cooking was meant to be done at luxury and as a demo of "Oh look how independent and multi-faceted I am". What I mean is all the things that seemed trivial in my twenties, such as what's happening in my neighborhood, what's happening to my own gender in another home, what's happening to other lives beyond my world, seem infinitely important now. I no longer react to something shocking that happened to a certain someone in a different country, in a different culture or in a different situation from me as, "Oh, that's sad. But what's that got to do with my life?" In fact, I am shaken by it. It feels like the world around me has a brand new context. I am also learning how to get a balanced view of life before voicing strong opinions. I am drawn to documentaries more than commercial movies. (Not saying that I don't have guilty pleasure movies and reality TV moments.) I constantly have ridiculously high expectations of myself. And yet, I can also revel in the in-between phase, when nothing significant ever seems to happen.
But while we're on the subject of expectations, I also know for a fact that if the scrawny-faced, bushy-browed me from the 90s were to time-hop and see my life right now, she'd have a bunch of complaints. As I can imagine, they would be:
1. OK, so this is our storage area. Where'd the rest of our sprawling apartment go?
2. I told you I wanted to walk into a wardrobe and smell the light mist of vanilla-lily perfume and feel the floaty, fairytale-like fabric on my fingers. Didn't quite picture trying to walk into a wardrobe and have bundles of clothes knock my winds out by going straight for my face!
3. And how about you spend less time showing off pictures of your cooking adventures on Facebook and invite some real friends over instead! Cos nobody really cares about how floaty your floating island is if they're not actually diving in it. But whatever.
4. And you still say 'whatever' a lot? Tut tut.
5. Anywho, can you call me a limo now? Being 12 looks way better.
But then twelve-year olds have a flair for drama.
That said, if there's anything that I'd like to tell my twelve-year old self, about my life in the thirty-somethings, it's this.
Yes, the thirty-somethings are not all fun. They're scary shit. They remind you of all the places that you could've reached, all the decisions you could've reversed. Even the 'small stuff' such as party places that are inaccessible to you cos you are now also a parent find their spotlight in the thirties. And you think you may have forgotten what your reckless twenty-something version looks like by some mental manipulation of ageing. But you can count on social media to reinforce it back to you as a memory you'd lovvve to have refreshed. (Five Years Ago Today, you were in a rooftop lounge, stuffing your face with jacket potatoes and not worried about whether your little one has wandered off too far.)
But then there is a silver lining. That those things don't matter any more. Cos life is constantly changing and when you get to your thirties, you'd have gained enough confidence and strength of will to chase all the dreams worth having... Sure, you probably haven't fulfilled your heightened sense of self — that imaginary person who first surfaced when you were writing the answer to ,"What do you want to be when you grow up?" in school. You're probably not even close to the more realistic version of him/her that you were trained to write about when you were at a mid-level job. ("Where do you see yourself five years from now?")
But whatever it may be, for most of us, thirties is when it begins to feel like we're getting our whacko selves figured out. It's the beginning of a different sort of adventure; when life gets more real.
And all I have to say is bring it on!
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