Turning 28

another one bites the dust

I wrote an essay last year about getting older when it was my birthday, so I figured I’d start an annual tradition where I do the same on every birthday.

I read this Scott Alexander essay the other day about being a dad which made me really excited about having kids in the future. There’s a meme about gender in here somewhere—women get baby fever when they see babies in strollers, while men feel the same way after reading blog posts describing babies as nascent predictive processing machines. Despite this excitement it still seems like it will be a while before I am a dad.

I was talking to my friend R on the phone a couple of months back and we commented on how bizarre it is that none of our friends have kids or are even pregnant. You’d expect at least a few people in our broader social circles but it’s nil. We’re all missing the window of peak biological fertility. It’s not because of cost (we’re sufficiently high earners) or a desire to not have kids at all (we all want to “eventually have kids”), but it’s a matter of choice - we’re choosing to live in big cities, prioritize our careers, and seek out excitement and fulfillment through other means.

I saw this Four Tet music video for Teenage Birdsong and it evoked this overwhelming nostalgia for my youth. It chronicles these two teenage girls pregaming in a bedroom and then going out to a concert. It’s filmed as a vlog, and it reminded me of my early college days drinking bootlegged alcohol in a dorm room, enamored by the novelty of how this substance made us feel (and excited for the carnal pleasures of frat parties).

Sometimes I find myself viscerally dreading routine and sameness. There’s a part of me that wants to scream “I am an autonomous agent that can exercise free will!” And then I’ll do some shit like quit my job and travel the world (I am now on my 4th job in 6 years). The latest manifestation of this urge was cutting my hair the shortest it’s been since college.

These are the countervailing forces in my head - one that tells me to grow up, take on real responsibility, embrace routine, be an “adult” and the other that tells me that youth is fleeting so might as well grasp on to it while I can and let impulse carry me. This is the cognitive dissonance that defines my late 20’s.

It reminds me of a dollar auction, a game that’s studied in game theory. In it, an auctioneer auctions off a prize with clear economic value (e.g. a dollar bill), and says that the highest bidder will receive the prize while the second highest bidder will lose the amount of their bid. What ends up happening in practice is that the auctioneer is the one who usually profits. The top two bidders ratchet up their bids to more than the value of the prize to avoid losing their bid. I wonder if constantly choosing youth over maturity maps onto this idea - short-term rational behavior can be long-term irrational.

My 10 year high school reunion is next month. There’s a teenage fantasy I once had (after being slighted by one of the popular kids) where I would show up to one of these things with a supermodel on my arm and a wildly successful career and be the envy of my entire graduating class but now I’m so apathetic about going I’m not sure I’ll make the trip back to California for it despite my curiosity (I actually think social media has ruined the curiosity satiation aspect of reunions - it’s pretty easy to get on Instagram / LinkedIn to see what people are up to).

More things hurt now too. I haven’t felt 100% physically in a long time. First it was my shoulder (rotator cuff strain from benching) then shin splints (I suspect from running and jumping too much rope), then an interstitial muscle strain (did a push-up too quickly), and now some abdominal pain (I went to urgent care twice and got one ultrasound all to be told by the medical system that I’m not only a hypochondriac but also a little bitch who can’t handle some muscle pain). My mom once mentioned to me that life in your 50s is simply various forms of pain management and while I’m still far away from there I can see how things can devolve like that.

When I went back home a few months ago, I was chatting with one of the kids my mom tutors. She’s 6 years old, and we were walking and talking in a local park. She told me “I feel like I’m getting smaller every day”. I replied “No, you’re growing bigger!” and she says “Ya I obviously know that, but the world keeps getting bigger so I feel smaller.” I’ll leave it up to the reader to interpret the wisdom in what she said, but I felt melancholy upon hearing that because the world seems like it’s stopped getting bigger for me.

In the show Midnight Gospel, the last episode features a conversation between Duncan Trussell and his mom who is dying of terminal cancer. It’s a beautiful conversation that traverses spirituality, loss, and love (would highly recommend a watch!). I first saw it in 2020 and since then have had multiple friends whose parents have passed. At some point these what ifs will just become the present. At one point his mom says:

“People really try to avoid the consideration that they are gonna die and that people they love are gonna die. It breaks your heart open. Our hearts have been closed, because we've closed them. We've defended ourselves against pain. And this opens them. Opening your heart sucks. When it really cracks open, it hurts.

But even the hurt transforms, because if you inquire into the hurt, you know what you're experiencing is love.”

I’m so happy and grateful I have family and friends I love so much - in a way it’s a privilege to feel that hurt when it eventually comes.

When I was younger I thought I’d get to a point in my life when I would have crystal clarity about the world and my place in it. I don’t think that’s the case anymore. And I think I’m happy about that.