Found 12 results when searching for "the turning 30 series"

30

I turned 30 in France. This was­n’t planned. It was­n’t even an excuse to buy the tick­et, when I made the deci­sion to fly there so many months ago.

But when I was at a din­ner par­ty that day, speak­ing with a woman who pol­ished her English from a year of doing her degree in London (and had an appro­pri­ate­ly posh British accent mixed in with her French), she guessed I was 30.

“Amazing”, I said, “To the day.” She had to con­firm, “Aujourd’hui?”, and I could­n’t stop her from hush­ing the oth­er con­ver­sa­tions so she could announce it to the table.

portrait at age 30

Kisses from the babies, the girls, and the babygurls.

They lit a thin can­dle in my banana split sun­dae, sang me Happy Birthday in two lan­guages, and plied me with expen­sive alco­hols. Earlier that day, Darren sent me an e‑mail, telling me to get drunk. I did­n’t let him down.

It was a far big­ger deal than I was used to, but it was­n’t hard to appre­ci­ate the atten­tion, from peo­ple I had only known for an evening or two. I thought they must have been hap­pi­er than me, just to have an excuse to cel­e­brate some­thing, and talk, and drink, and cheer.

No won­der peo­ple like their birth­days. No won­der peo­ple love France.

There’s no way for me to deny how sig­nif­i­cant the last year has been. At one point, I final­ly felt like I was the per­son I’d be for the rest of my life. Then things changed, and I fell to my low­est point. But I picked myself up, and here I am now. Still human. Still alive.

This project was a way for me to doc­u­ment my evolv­ing life and aging skin as it is now. I nev­er knew how much I’d go through, and how much would change between each inter­val.

I turned 30, and I won­der who I’ll be in anoth­er day, anoth­er month, anoth­er year, anoth­er decade.

The Turning 30 Series

29 11/12: The Work in Progress

He who is not sat­is­fied with him­self will grow; he who is not sure of his own cor­rect­ness will learn many things.

—Chinese proverb

As much as I think I’ve become set­tled in my char­ac­ter and my mind­set, I still sur­prise myself with how much these con­tin­ue to change.

self-portrait at 29 11/12

Me and my Plushstache (hand­made with love by Shannon Gerard).

I used to think I’d final­ly be hap­py if I was a cer­tain per­son — some ide­al­ized ver­sion of myself who was inde­struc­tible, infal­li­ble, and flaw­less — but I recent­ly real­ized that I should­n’t see this as the goal. Instead, I should be hap­py with the fact that I’m not there yet, because change means evo­lu­tion and growth.

It would be fol­ly to believe that an arrival is also an end. One should con­tin­ue to strug­gle, and to doubt, and to hurt, and to be a work in progress.

I turn 30 in a month, and I still don’t know who I am.

The Turning 30 Series

29 9/12: The Rocker

Music has always been a big part of my life, so it’s strange to con­sid­er the fact that I only seri­ous­ly took up an instru­ment the year I’m turn­ing 30, which I gen­er­al­ly con­sid­er late to be start­ing any­thing new.

I used to play piano and flute, but that was nev­er real­ly my choice. For the for­mer, it was more of my mom want­i­ng me to be a good Chinese boy, and me not want­i­ng to let her down. When it came to the lat­ter, my school had a strong empha­sis on arts, and either visu­al arts or music were manda­to­ry. I chose music1, and played the flute; far from ide­al for a teenag­er going through puber­ty and an iden­ti­ty cri­sis.

I bought my first ukulele a few months ago, and I don’t think I’ve stopped play­ing since.

Self portrait at 29 9/12

Jammin’ in my jam­mies. With what may pos­si­bly be an erec­tion.

Photo by Jess.

So much of my life has been filled by those four lit­tle strings. It’s an entire­ly new medi­um I’m still explor­ing, a mus­cle I’d yet to flex, a way of express­ing myself that’s so unlike any of my oth­er out­lets.

I get pains in my fin­gers and wrists from play­ing too much, so I struc­ture my life around the breaks; doing laun­dry, writ­ing, clean­ing my room, sort­ing my paper­work until the tin­gling or pinch­ing goes away. The pads of my fin­gers are dead. I used to fall asleep think­ing of her — now I work out scale pat­terns and chords across the fret­board in my head until I pass out. I even decid­ed to make the ulti­mate com­mit­ment and grow out the nails on my strum­ming hand because the longer they get, the more pleased I am with the sound (and I find both long nails and asym­me­try absolute­ly dis­gust­ing).

It’s come to the point where I’d rather play ukulele than play games, or go out, or talk to peo­ple. I love play­ing so much that I enjoy it even though I’m still no good at it.

I turn 30 in three months, and music is my hot hot bath, my dead end, and my girl­friend.

The Turning 30 Series

  1. Ironic that I’m so much more of a visu­al artist now. [↩]

29 8/12: The Son

There’s no rev­e­la­tion more star­tling than the fact that your dad is cool­er than you.

This is espe­cial­ly true of my own father, who isn’t just cool for an old guy, he’s cool peri­od. As a teenag­er, I remem­ber him wear­ing a leather bomber jack­et, and learn­ing to ride a pur­ple Kawasaki Ninja sport bike which he even­tu­al­ly trad­ed in for a sil­ver Porsche.

When I was even younger, my friends would tell me he looked like a secret agent. One time he came to help me move out of res­i­dence, and his jeans had wider cuffs than mine (and back then I loved wear­ing wide-leg khakis). I can’t remem­ber a time when he did­n’t wear some­thing by Lacoste, Polo, or Tommy, and even though he may dress far younger than his age, he can still pull it off.

Now he’s a man mov­ing clos­er to his 60s, dri­ving a Mercedes and a BMW, with what seems to have a coterie of women whose com­mon inter­est is him. He watch­es pop­u­lar movies, prac­tices singing, and dances on a reg­u­lar basis. Even my grand­ma once told me that peo­ple like him because he’s the fun one to be around.

Self portrait at 29 8/12

 

This is all very dif­fer­ent from me; a shy, intro­vert­ed, awk­ward per­son whose idea of a good time gen­er­al­ly involves being in front of a com­put­er.

Still, with all these dif­fer­ences, I know I’m his son. Just a chip off the old block, with the same work ethics, the same per­fec­tion­ist ten­den­cies, the same neu­rot­ic ten­den­cies.

We get grumpy when we’re hun­gry. We hate feel­ing sweaty and some­times have to show­er twice in a day. We make the same sil­ly jokes when we’re around new peo­ple. We dec­o­rat­ed our hous­es exclu­sive­ly with mod­ern, min­i­mal­ist fur­ni­ture before we knew what each oth­er’s hous­es looked like. And as I grow old­er, I’ve also start­ed devel­op­ing the same night owl habits, care­free atti­tude, insom­nia, and diges­tion prob­lems.

I turn 30 in four months, and I’m becom­ing my father’s son.

The Turning 30 Series

29 7/12: The Taoist

I got these tat­toos to remind myself to stay on the path. A reminder like this is some­thing of a para­dox; to be on the path is to be unaware of the path.

Even though I strong­ly believed in the tenets of Taoism, I still found myself off the path more often than on it. There was a point where I began to ques­tion whether I was tru­ly a Taoist or just a Tao-enthu­si­ast, because my under­stand­ing of the ideas did­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean an abil­i­ty to apply them to my life.

Self portrait at 29 7/12

 

But over time, I for­got about my tat­toos. Or, should I say, I stopped think­ing about them, the way one may be so accus­tomed to the nose on one’s face as to nev­er dwell on the idea of it’s exis­tence.

In the same way, I’ve for­got­ten about the path too, even though I know I’m on it. I don’t seek coun­cil from the Tao Te Ching nowa­days, because there’s noth­ing left that I don’t under­stand. I found the feel­ing of seren­i­ty I’d been seek­ing for so long.

I turn 30 in five months, and I final­ly believe I’m a Taoist.

The Turning 30 Series