A Thirty Year Vintage

A child I love was born, and I turned into a thirty-year vintage.

To celebrate my birthday I had lunch with my niece, Roa. The drawing above is the present she made for me. She's two, by the way.

When she was first born, it was the strangest thing. I'd never seen a newborn up close before. When is this little wriggling thing going to grow, when is it going to turn into a person? It felt like staring at an empty DOS machine with nothing installed on it.

She didn't know how to poop. Didn't know what hunger was. Didn't know her fingers were fingers. A completely unprogrammed human, pure by default.

Two years later that same kid handed me a birthday present. Come on. That's adorable.

What was going through her head while she drew it?

Was I ever like that?

Since it was my birthday, I did the math on my age.

Year age: 28.

International age: 28.

Korean age: 29. (Korean age gives you one year the moment you're born and adds another every time the calendar flips. Always the biggest number, and somehow still the one that gets used the most.:0)

The upside is that my international age always makes me a year younger.

So, roughly thirty years lived. If lifespans keep stretching and I make it to ninety (ugh, ninety. How do you even do that. I'd rather burn bright and short), then I'm one third of the way in.

I started out exactly like her, an empty can with nothing programmed on it, and thirty years later I still have no idea what living is supposed to be. If I'd figured it out I'd probably be a philosopher by now. Or a monk somewhere.

Thirty years in, a thirty-year vintage, and I still don't know who I am or how I'm supposed to live from here.

The pure part is long gone. What I learned instead was how to hold onto people and envy them at the same time, how to fight over money, how to go to war for the kind of success society hands out. And some days I wonder what any of it was for.

My teens taught me that fire is hot. My twenties taught me how to be around other people.

So what are my thirties for?

Back in my teens I had a goal: before turning thirty, work at every kind of company there is. Startups, factories, conglomerates, small firms. Ten of them.

At twenty-nine, I've done it. All ten. (Which is exactly why my resume is a mess.)

So what do I do with my thirties, and what am I supposed to walk away with in my forties?

That's the assignment for my last year in the twenties.

Thirty years and I still don't know what I should be doing. That's always been true.

But I give each day everything I've got. Even as a fragile human who might die tomorrow. Or today.

So I'll keep looking for the parts of me that haven't been programmed yet, the way my niece still is, and give today everything I've got.

Happy birthday to me. And thank you for holding out this long.