29. As I creep ever closer to the age which shall not be named, I get increasingly morose and angsty. Not all the time, of course: just moments here and there, when I suddenly remember the slow, entropic march of Time and its sluggish, juggernaut companion, Age.My birthday was this week. I don't do birthdays. Although family and friends have routinely put forth valiant(and appreciated) efforts to help me find joy on my birthday, I almost always have found a way to sabotage it.
In the same week, I've moved into a new apartment. Somehow the two events seem inextricably linked. I can't help but glance around the new living space at my possessions cluttered in random piles and worry about how I'll find places for each thing. It feels like each new year provides a similar opportunity: year 29 is a new life space; it requires cleaning, rearranging, new smells, new bugs in alarming places and enough unknowns to make me feel a little anxious.
Thanks to Google Maps, I can provide a satellite image of the new place(even though it looks like a peaceful community in rural Syria that's about to get smart-bombed). I wish I could get that kind of bird's eye view of my life. New apartment. New grad school experience. New set of accompanying opportunities. Maybe if I could get high above it all, I might discover that new things are good. I might find peace in the knowledge that I can take new steps and not totally ruin everything.
I've heard a lot of people talk about living with no regrets. I'm not sure that's possible. At least not for me. In the words of Captain Kirk, "I need my pain." I have lots of regrets; things I should have done, things I shouldn't have done. Is it possible to make the most out of your life unless you've already squandered it in some way? I'd love to meet the people who used every moment with total clarity and absolute efficiency. It can't be done. So I resolve to wrap myself up in the tapestry of my regrets; I'll steep myself in them until I never forget them. Maybe then I'll be wise enough to ask the right question or take the right step or find the right person.
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