No Longer the Ingenue
Some thoughts on turning 30.
I turn 30 tomorrow! (Give to charity, please. No presents.)
Obviously this is billed as a Rather Big Deal, because we (humans) looove to mark the passage of time and we (white people) loooove the phrase “the big [insert number here]-O!” Tomorrow, my body will have been on this earth for three decades (aside from my nose, which will turn four in December).
A lot of people I know feel… very strongly about this milestone! Some (probably more than I’m aware of) will simply be turning 29 a few more times, and others are having full panic attacks. Some old souls are welcoming it joyously, and others declare that they don’t care at all about it, but usually with Fred Armisen eyes:
I was unsure how I felt about the big 3-0 until fairly recently; less due to fear, and more that I simply kept forgetting it was coming. I notoriously have an awful memory, which is really inconvenient when it comes to acquaintances’ names and friends’ birthdays, but really convenient for forgetting about impending existential threats. Add to that the abysmal cacophony happening in my head at any given moment – it’s hard for dread to make its voice heard amidst all the boy problems (romantic issues) and Boy Problems (Carly Rae Jepsen song).
It wasn’t until watching Tick, Tick… Boom! that it actually sunk in that this birthday might be something that deserved conscious thought. The opening number is entirely about a man coming to terms with turning 30 in the year 1990.
Watch if you haven’t! It’s great. Jonathan Larson put his entire (surprisingly straight) Larsussy into writing it, and Andrew Garfield put his entire (also surprisingly straight) Garfussy into performing it. And I’ll be honest: Lin Manuel Miranda put his entire (less surprisingly straight) Dear Theodussy into directing it.
Anyway, the song itself is pretty pessimistic about turning 30. Here are some lyrics:
It's 30/90
Why can't you stay 29
Hell, you still feel like you're 22
Turn thirty, 1990
Bang! You're dead
What can you do?
There’s a lot in the song that I relate to, and a lot that I don’t. I don’t particularly need to stay 29. I do still feel like I’m 22. I don’t feel like I’m dead, either physically or relevance-wise. I do feel like, “what can you do?” Lastly, I don’t feel like it’s 1990, though I do wear chunky knit sweaters, listen to a lot of Madonna, and watch a lot of Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks romcoms. Hmm… I’ve also written episodes of The Simpsons and Rugrats, and my manager recently called (telephoned!) to tell me he was submitting me for a staff job on The Wonder Years. It might actually be the 90s??
Anyway, how do I feel about my big birthday, you ask?
Is it bad to say… fine?
An eerie calmness has come over me in the last few months. During my Zoom therapy call (ahh, yes, we are in 2024) last week, I interrogated this feeling, and I realized that a lot of my younger self’s aspirations were tied to the novelty of youth. In middle school, I was convinced I was gonna write a bestselling YA novel and receive accolades for being a wunderkind. In college, I just kind of assumed I’d be married with two kids by 30, and that would be my life. In my mid-twenties, I kept feeling like I was on the brink of greatness, like one of the things I was working on had to get big, culminating in some splashy Hollywood Reporter spread about how I was an “equally young, equally annoying, but less-publicly-nude Lena Dunham.”
But then you turn 30, and as Jonathan Larson so eloquently puts it: “you’re no longer the ingenue.” If I sell a show tomorrow, people will say “wow, he’s young for a showrunner,” but it’s not gonna make any headlines. If I marry rich and have kids in the next two years (anyone… anyone… Bueller…), then I will be a 32-year-old with kids, which is a pretty normal thing to be. If I write a novel… who am I kidding. I can’t even read a full chapter of a book in one sitting.
You’d think that this realization would make me sad, but surprisingly it just feels like relief. It’s like I was gunning for first place, but then someone else got first place… and second, and third. And so I stop pushing myself to the limit, because I’ll get to the finish line eventually, which is the only really important thing now that the records have been set. I walk for a bit, and look up at the sky, and you know what? Without the hyperventilating and sweating and desperation to win, it’s actually a pretty nice day. There are birds flying above, and if you look for a while, you can see that the clouds are moving - slowly, but moving nonetheless.
This attitude might sound like it comes from a place of zen, but I think it actually stems largely from a place of feeling helpless and tired. I know I’m young – really, I do, everyone loves to tell me – but it still feels like I’ve been trying for that first place prize for a long time. I feel like I sewed all the seeds in the garden as the packet instructed, only to watch the seedlings die in the hoarfrost. (I’m sorry for mixing metaphors. I just wanted to use the word “hoarfrost.”)
When I started going to therapy consistently in 2019, I complained a lot about the two sectors of my life I felt were lacking: my career and my love life. “If I just had one of them locked down,” I would repeat ad nauseam to a very nice woman named Jennifer who probably prayed for my death, “the lack of the other might be bearable. I told her that I felt like I was doing “the work,” but there’s only so much you can do before you need someone else to chip in. You can’t be a staff writer without someone putting you on their staff. You can’t have a boyfriend without someone putting you on his staff.
I think - based on the writing careers and love lives of the adults I grew up around - I expected a feeling of permanence. If you’ve been to my place, you know I am a nester. And I have been flapping around for a while!
I had a conversation with my friend Paul recently where he basically said that the old model of “making a living working in entertainment” is no more, at least for the foreseeable future. Basically: most artists can’t survive without a side hustle, the way that humans can’t survive without a liver. It’s not glamorous, but it’s necessary.
Is this kinda sad? Yes. However, it allowed me to think rethink my place in Hollywood - it’s not about “making it” or not. Lives spent in the arts haven’t paid well for the majority of people throughout history - if stability is my number one priority, I picked a career poorly.
30, for me, is coming to terms with what my life actually looks like, instead of what I expected it to be. I think this new decade will be about finding peace; two freelance scripts and a day job is success if you decide it is. Two hookups, a pen pal in New York, and a gentleman caller is a love life, even if it’s not what you read about in romance novels. (Side note, if I did write that book, it would be called My Twelve Almost-Boyfriends, and the audiobook would be narrated by Michael Urie).
To live a life defined by expectation is to live a life full of disappointment. Happiness can be elusive. Contentment, I think, can be a choice.
Even nesting birds have to flap around, and it doesn’t stop them from singing. Most marathon runners know they won’t get first place. And being a gardener means planting new seeds when the first batch dies in the hoarfrost.
It’s worth mentioning that I’m turning 30 in Los Angeles, in a leftist community, with a cohort of friends who attended liberal arts colleges. I think a lot of people in this country stave off the “growing older” scaries by doing the domestic pivot (a dance craze sweeping the nation!) - having kids, moving to the suburbs, etc. - but that’s just not what’s happening in my circle. I know only two people my age who own property in Los Angeles. None of my close friends have children yet, and many have decided against ever having them.
Here’s what we are doing. We’re doubling down on skincare, trying to make our rentals feel like home, and keeping melancholy at bay by buying house plants. We’re staying young - making each other laugh with dumb jokes, navigating our contentious relationships with social media, trying to figure out our personal style, and killing aforementioned house plants. We’re gossiping and feeling guilty about it, we’re sending each other videos of small animals, we’re returning to men we probably shouldn’t. We’re dancing, when we can.
But we’re also growing up. We’re not drinking nearly as much, but when we do, we order drinks we actually like. We make more good choices, and make the bad choices knowing they’re bad. We’re allowing ourselves to spend money on things we really love, and learning to feel comfortable saying no to things we don’t want to do. We’re having gatherings that are more intimate and more interesting. We’re befriending our insecurities, and getting cappuccinos in ceramic mugs at coffee shops. We’re biting the bullet, and we’re assuming the best. We’re letting go of stupid grudges, and telling our friends we love them. We’re exhaling.
Like Cher’s appearance in Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again, 30’s arrival is both expected and a shock. You can lie, and get botox, and lament the roads not taken if you want, but nothing will stop the clouds from moving across the sky. Jonathan Larson puts it well: “What can you do?”
I, for one, will be taking a walk in the park down the street, reading a chapter of a good book, and going to bed by 10pm.
Ugh, wouldn’t that be amazing? No, I’ll accidentally doomscroll until 12:49am, curse out loud when I realized I forgot to do today’s Connections, and fall (like one falls over a pointy rock) into a fitful slumber.
But you know what? I’ll be pretty content doing it.
With backing vocals by Vanessa Hudgens,
Johnny
If you too are feeling conflicted about aging, here are some other things I’ve stumbled on that may bring you some peace:
The episode of 30 Rock where Jack realizes that he’s the father figure in his fuck-buddy’s roster of men, and Jenna gives him a pep talk:
Jenna: Don't fight it, embrace it. Look, do you really want this girl asking you to go hear her friend DJ in Brooklyn?
Jack: No, that sounds exhausting.Jenna: Do you want to drive five hours to go rock climbing with her, and be expected to have sex after?
Jack: I do not. I mean, my back-
Jenna: So don't break up with her. Just be the older person. It's fun. You get to say racist stuff whenever you want, and people bring you soup.Jack: I do like soup…
My friend Brenna said to me recently that when she gets worried about the future, she remembered that she’s felt happier with each new era of her life (ie her early 20s was better than her teens, her late 20s was better than her early 20s, etc.). I have been thinking a lot about how true that is.
This tiktok where this person theorizes that looking like you’ve aged will be trendy in the future.
And lastly, “Everything Stays” from Adventure Time, written and performed by Rebecca Sugar:
You write so much older than you look! ;
Love your writing…
This is a beautifully written, insightful take on turning 30, and on where you fit in a world gone mad. I loved it.