The milestone birthdays are often met with half-joking
trepidation, and this one is no exception. I can’t honestly say I was looking
forward to not being able to say I’m 20-something, and there’s nothing going on
in my life right now that wasn’t happing when I was 29. Sometimes I find myself
wondering at what point I celebrated becoming another year older, like you do
when you’re a kid, and lamenting it like I do now! In spite of all this, I did
actually really enjoy it when I turned 30 yesterday, for a number of reasons.
Not the least of them, that’s when many people Happy
Birthday to me.
That might sound like a strange thing to say but it’s to do
with the context and relationships I have with the people who say it.
Obviously, there are my friends and family, and whoever I happened to mention
it to yesterday were polite enough to wish me a happy birthday. But there’s
also a large number of people on social media who said it as well.
If you look at my page on Facebook for the next few days you’ll
find something like 98 people who took a few seconds out of their day to post
Happy Birthday on my timeline. There were all sorts of people. Close friends
who I’d seen that day, some friends who I’d seen last week, old friends I hadn’t
seen for several months, some people I haven’t seen for years and in some
cases, people who I never expected to hear from ever again. So many people. And
it does mean a lot that, no matter how long it’s been, I’m still on their radar
enough that they can drop me a quick message on the day I turned 30.
There were people I knew at school and had barely seen since.
I had a Facebook conversation with Jo who I knew at school; we haven’t spoken
in years but in the year we all turn 30 she took some time to message me. Mai
from Japan, who I haven’t seen for 5 years, still keeps in touch. People I know
from work; they’re all nice people and it’s always a pleasure to hear from
them. People from Swindon, who were kind enough to stay friends with me even
after Amy and I broke up at the end of last year. Some of the guys from The
Fakes, who have been my most consistent group of friends for nearly 12 years.
Some people I’ve literally met once at gigs and barely know. And of course
there are the group of people I find the hardest to categorise, who are the people
I’ve been hanging around with for the last several weeks. It was great to hear
from you all. Thank you.
And yeah, I know Facebook makes that quite easy with updates
and reminders. But they’ve still got to make an active decision to message me,
or post on my timeline. Every single one of them made my day a little bit
brighter, and that’s always worth doing.
As for me…
Perhaps this isn’t where I thought I’d be at 30 but to be
honest I don’t ever remember having much of a plan for that anyway. I still don’t,
even to this very day I rarely look further ahead than the end of the week.
Does that mean I’ve missed out on a lot of things I could have done by now?
Potentially, but I’ll live to see another day and I’m sure I’ll get there in
the end. There’s no sense in tying yourself down to plans all the time. Nor is
there much to be gained from kicking myself about mistakes I’ve made in the
past. There have been many, but if I’m honest with myself, if I had to do it
all again there’s probably not a great many things I would do differently.
Right now, I’m fortunate enough to be in a good place, and
for the first time all year I find myself looking forward to what the future
may bring…
