Preemptive Retaliation

And I am in my final year of my 20’s. In less than one year I will be thirty years old. I will have a good house. I will have a good job. I will have a baby. By the time I am thirty I will be Grown Up with everything that comes with it. I will hopefully know how to drive.

On top of those things that are certain (house is secure in its financial bubble, job is secure in this austere age, baby is secure despite the constant perils of life) I have given myself a number of other goals to achieve before I am thirty. This is common for the tv shows I used to watch – the sit-coms and dramas that would play between adverts in the evenings. A character would be turning thirty and they would lament the event as if it were the end of days. I specifically remember an episode of FRIENDS where Joey (who I would always like for my name despite me being a total Chandler) screaming to the heavens WHY GOD WHY because this was the end of life as he knew it. There would be so many missed opportunities! So many things they didn’t do before they became thirty! That was also a plot point on an episode of FRIENDS. Maybe the same one?

Anyway, my nearing-thirty bucket list won’t be anything like that. I mean, I’ve done a lot already haven’t I? I’ve traveled to far and exotic places. I’ve made stupid mistakes with fantastic consequences, and the opposite. I have a good job and house (mentioned before) with a wife who I love and who loves me back. I’ve even written and published a book, which many people take a lifetime to do – though theirs might turn out to be less angsty and, well, less bad than mine. What else can I add to a bucket-list?

Well, honestly, I would like to play piano. It’s something I dabbled in once. With a works bonus I bought a keyboard from a German website and tried playing it for a few weeks before I annoyed everyone around me. It was in the days when Rob, my old flatmate, would sit and idly strum guitar in an absentmindedly brilliant way and I wanted that kind of lackluster talent. At least, that’s what I thought it was. I conveniently ignored Rob’s fifteen plus years of practice, jamming out in his room to the pop-punk of our youth, learning chords and riffs with a tuned ear, picking out what he liked and what he didn’t, so that absentminded strumming was more reflex than talent. I gave up on piano, although I did manage to play the opening chords of Counting Crow’s Colorblind which, had I been able to do when I was sixteen, would have gotten me super laid.

Another bucket-list thing of mine is to be able to do a pull-up. This is part of a longtime battle I am having with my body, conflated with self image and wants and desires and etc. Occasionally I go climbing with Mike and that boy has some serious guns. He is the archetype of the sexy PHD man – taped up glasses, quiet smile, and arms to make you swoon. I’d make a quip that I’m lucky he doesn’t read his blog, but even if he did it wouldn’t matter. The man works out, and it shows. He has put time and dedication into climbing and eating right, and I’m envious of that. He can do pull-ups. I cannot do pull-ups. I want to be able to pull ups.

What’s another bucket-list thing of mine? Seeing the Northern Lights, which I’ve always been fascinated in ever since reading His Dark Materials as a younger me. 

None of those will happen this year though, I have bigger fish to fry.

Instead I have smaller challenges. More manageable. Bite-size even. One is to read two books a month. I miss reading and love it so. I am reading a pregnancy book and a Vonnegut book right now. The difference between the two is astounding.

Another is to write here at least once a month. Lofty ambitions, I know, but I’m sure I’ll have something to keep going with at each point.

The next is to finish writing and publish my cyber detective story. You know, the one I’ve been working on for years and keep moaning about because I don’t think I’m good enough to actually pull off? That one. I’m going to finish that and publish it before I am thirty. Here are my words. Mark them.

My final one is to be a good dad. God that sounds weird, calling myself a dad, but that’s the way it goes.