So I turned 30

I feel old, man. It’s not so much that I thought yeah, three decades, I’ll be totally settled and everything will be awesome! because I’ve never been big on lying to myself. I certainly know people with wives and kids and houses and Serious Business careers who don’t. So that’s okay.

Part of the reason I feel old is that our new way of being, never being fully present and never alone, feels more acute than ever this year. And I am not simpatico with it. I’m old enough to remember when being online meant firing up my modem for an hour to log into my rented unix shell for Usenet and the web via Lynx and today I’m stressed out because I’ll be out of circulation for 12 hours on my way to Athens on Tuesday. Do I think this is bad? Of course not. Look at poor Neda, how her death will make a difference because our little connected computers are as much machines that kill fascists as turntables ever were. And they play music too. But I wasn’t born with a cell phone in my hand like the kids these days. Never in my life have I felt out of time with the dance. Not until 2009, a date that at least feels sufficiently futuristic.