480 Months: Turning 40 at the end of world (as we knew it)

This was supposed to be another zine. A zine, 10 years later, about turning 40. It was also going to chronicle this past decade of my life and provide a reflection on the 360 Months project, with an additional 120 months of wisdom to offer. 

Part of that initial inspiration was to utilize the resources at the mostly empty office I go into on Thursdays. With the upper management and almost all of my coworkers logging on remotely these days, I would be able to print out 100 copies of my 480 Months zine on the down low. Then I realized there would still be all the labor of assembling and distributing ahead of me. On top of that realization, things became complicated by an impending major life change as my 30's entered their final months (more on that soon). 

So. In lieu of a zine you can hold in your hands on my 40th birthday, I simply offer this...

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In March 2011, I began confronting the urgency of entering into a new decade by inviting others to share their thoughts on turning 30. I wanted to learn what my peers were experiencing and feeling on the cusp of that milestone which had no official rite of passage.

"Many of us who are approaching the 3 decade mark are anxious about officially entering adulthood," I wrote in this invitation one month before my own birthday. "Others attempt to embrace this development. How we feel about turning 30 has a lot to do with the extent to which there is a disconnect between what our lives look like now and our own (and society's) expectations for this moment; how what we are doing measures up with what we wanted to be when we grew up."

In less than 30 days, I received submissions of personal essays from 30 different people about turning 30. The stories and observations ranged quite a bit. While many of us focused on the innumerable challenges we had been navigating, there was still a hopeful thread connecting them all as we anticipated the some of the possibilities ahead. 

But where are we now? How are we feeling about turning 40 as the world continues to reel, over 1 year into a global pandemic? 

In one way, this past year has felt like a full decade. But at the same time, it just feels like April has finally arrived after the longest March ever. Spring is finally blooming again and some of us are starting to get vaccinated even as the world remains forever transformed by COVID. There is finally some hope even as we struggle to grasp the magnitude of this collective suffering and loss. 

And my personal transformation which I alluded to earlier is that I am moving back to my home state! That's right, after 12 years in Philadelphia I'll be shipping up to Boston just a few weeks after my 40th birthday. I'm excited to live closer to my family in Massachusetts and to explore this city I honestly haven't spent much time in beyond bus layovers at South Station and punk shows in my youth. And I am happy to report that even though my 30's began with heartbreak they are ending full of love. I feel so much gratitude for this and for making it to 480 months in good health and with a supportive community that transcends city, state, and national borders. 

So I'm feeling pretty good about turning 40 and continuing to embrace getting older. For me, it doesn't have quite the same urgency, surprisingly, as the existential dread of a decade ago. Should I be feeling anxious and deflated about being "over the hill" now? Should I feel regret for not "settling down" and starting a family? The dominant culture (shaped by systems like capitalism and hetero-patriarchy) sure would like us to all be paralyzed by such questions. 

If I have learned anything from this past decade, and particularly this past year, it's how interconnected everything is and how important solidarity and mutual aid are in pointing toward a better world for us all. If we remain in our individualistic, competitive bubbles then our lives will be driven by scarcity and fear. But if we dare to build and learn with others for the common good then anything is possible. 

Happy 40th to my peers and to a better future beyond the current society. 💓  

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30 Days of 30: Sarah Berkowitz

Sarah Berkowitz is another one of those superheroes. Her contributions to the Wooden Shoe as treasurer, zine orderer, among other roles, have invaluably helped to make the collective what it is today. Sarah is one of the smartest and most inspiring activists I have met in Philadelphia. Hopefully one day we’ll carve out some time in both of our busy schedules to finally make that Hole cover band, that we’ve dreamed about for so long, become a reality.

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This weekend I went to the Chicago Zine Fest. I left Philly around 3pm on Thursday and I drove through the night with my partner, Ryan. I’m 29 now. I have been involved in zines for about half my life. Many of the things that were important to me when I was younger are still a big part of my identity. Feminism, anarchism, veganism, social justice, reproductive rights have all been a pretty big part of my life for the past 10 years. These have been my anchors when everything else was in turmoil throughout my 20’s. 

I have been thinking about turning 30 for about a year. It is on my mind a lot. Especially because a lot of the things I am interested in attract younger folks. It feels good to have experience and to feel grounded in that experience. But sometimes I crave more peers my own age that are interested in the same projects I am interested in.

When I was a teenager I never really thought about life after college. I had no specific goals of marriage or a full-time job.  I had little aspirations for life rituals. I spent a lot of my early 20’s crying and feeling sad. Things constantly felt hard- relationships, friendships, and jobs. I stayed in bad situations for too long. When I was 24 I got what I thought could be a dream job. I became manager at a Planned Parenthood surgical center. It was a nightmare. I felt lost. Every full-time job I had had after college wrecked me. I had no idea how to advocate for myself so I stayed miserable in horrible work situations. These patterns were mirrored in a lot of my personal relationships as well.

I spent the second half of my 20s making drastic changes. I quit my job, went to therapy, traveled, spent summers biking around and swimming in fountains. I started staffing at the Wooden Shoe. I took risks, put myself out there and learned a lot of new skills. Eventually I morphed into someone that was pretty sassy and assertive. 

I haven’t had a full-time job in 3 years. I’ve been taking classes to go back to school for nursing and working various part time jobs. I still feel weary about striving for a full-time career. I know that jobs are never going to be satisfying or fulfilling completely. I would choose not to work if I didn’t have to. What satisfies me the most are the projects I don’t get paid for. I like feeling connected to the things I have felt passionate for in my youth. I don’t want to give up my radical ideals. I feel a sense of pride that I am still connected to anarchism and feminism and vegetarianism. I have seen so many people give up on these things over the years. It can be really disheartening. 

When I was 18, someone told me that one of the members of the band Submission Hold got a circle-A tattoo when he turned 30. I thought that was so cool! Everyone gets punk and anarchy tattoos when they first get into it but to get it when you are 30 means that you have sat with these things and let them become a part of your life. You are in it for the long haul.

With that in mind, I have been planning to enter my thirtieth year with an event I have been calling 30 days of 30. I want to plan an event for my 30^th year for 30 days around my actual birthday on Sept 28^th. September tends to be a strange month and personally there have been some major losses around my birthday so I would really like to reclaim this time of year. I expect to use some of those days to get tattoos that I have been talking about getting for 10 years.

When I think about being 30, I finally feel like I am a grown up. I feel ready to buy a house and move in with a partner, to move across the country, and to think about having kids. When I was in college the first time I never cut class or took a lot of risks. I had a lot of insecurities.  I’m an adult now, so I’m confident that cutting class to drive to Chicago for a zine fest to see a Q & A with Aaron Cometbus and Al Burian is the right thing to be doing with my weekend. Cometbus zine also turns 30 this year. It was comforting to hear Aaron Cometbus say, “Some people have kids, I’ve been doing a magazine for 30 years.” It is ok to stick with what you know.

The 30 Gland: John Biando

I wish I knew John Biando better at Bard. We didn’t have any classes together or belong to any of the same student groups or anything so I had to wait until after we both moved to his hometown of Philadelphia to become friends. I recently had the pleasure of attending John’s 30^th birthday party where German cuisine and drinks were consumed in honor of this solid human being. In addition to being a creative writing Master (literally), John is a talented artist in the mediums of digital illustration (see below) and Halloween-themed food creation.

Check out his Philly sports blog Crying Eagles, Noble Turkeys, Red Glares at: http://nobleturkeys.blogspot.com/.

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Beautiful Josephine was the most depressed dog at the pound six months ago. I wanted a three-legged dog and Josephine had four, but after a troublingly toothy encounter with tripedal Tony, I settled on bashful and beautiful Jo. She was priced to move at three cents a pound. Some of those pounds were intestinal worms.

Little sleeper cells of U. stenocephala. They caused a lot of abdominal unrest in Beautiful Josephine. But since nobody knew about the hookworms, everyone assumed that the unrest was just Josephine’s disposition, that the dog was just a farter.

I didn’t know if I could live with Josephine’s gas. I got a dog, a depressed dog, because I was depressed and I thought a depressed dog and I could help each other work things out. Her effluvium set a more or less constant dark, choking, overwhelming tone to our time together. It was embarrassing and undignified to be 29, unemployed, and struggling with an unseeable sickness. It was embarrassing and undignified to be 29, unemployed, and struggling with an ethereal emanation. This confluence of smells and feelings felt almost unconstitutional. It felt like double jeopardy.

While we coped with Josephine’s aromas, she developed another affliction. She got very itchy. She started to scratch herself raw. I took her to the shelter’s veterinarian. He thought it was seasonal allergies. Allergies are just as impalpable as depression. I took her to the University of Pennsylvania Veterinary Hospital. They’re very thorough. I wanted a cure.

As the Ivy League Veterinarian greased up Josephine’s finger, she talked about how she swore she’d never express a dog’s anal glands again when she finished Vet school. She complained that anal glands were an evolutionary dead end, that there was no reason for them anymore. She said this as she milked a juice out of Josephine’s butt that made me yearn for our salad days of smothering toots. They smell of anal gland fluid is deeply wounding. It smells like a sweating metal hinge on a coffin filled with decaying possum meat.[1]

I don’t know that anal glands are indisputably unnecessary, but it sure seems like they’re at a wooly mammoth-meets-tarpit moment in history. Cursory internet research indicates that dogs’ anal glands are used to mark territory, show fear, and help with identification. Today’s dogs don’t live a life in which a trailing scent is very important. They sleep in our beds. They have to eat diet pet food. They take Yoga classes. There just isn’t much occasion, or, at least, proper occasion, for anal gland dispersal in a dog’s daily life. If we can just get dogs off anal glands and on android apps, well, I feel like there can be a pretty seamless transition from funky to 4G. Because it’s untoward to anally juice up one’s own Yoga mat.

I’m 30 today, and I’m seeing parallels between Beautiful Josephine’s anal glands and what it means to enter one’s third decade. Thirty is an identifier, one so potently sensible it might as well be a glandular secretion. Culturally, 30 marks territory and is a display of fear. Thirty squirts in an upward trajectory and the display is a fearful one in that it’s going to land hard and rottenly. Thirty means the pressure of getting somewhere, knowing that one’s deeds will echo in Bingo Valhalla. Thirty makes a statement. A very fetid statement.

So I have to ask. Should 30 be going the way of Beautiful Josephine’s anal glands, which should be going the way of the tin can and string? Today, on my 30^th birthday, my answer is: no. I don’t want 30 to be a useless nozzle in my rectum; I want it to be important. That’s why I prefer to think of 30 as a mysterious nozzle in my rectum. Let’s leave it alone in there and let it be some kind of third eye, a pineal gland, the “seat of the soul” as Descartes might say. The 30 gland isn’t something to be expressed by a Veterinarian. No good ever comes of squeezing something dry.

Without the outside pressure, malodorous 30 is like my Beautiful Josephine, ringing me in blithe circles when I come home to her.

Josephine’s worms are all dispatched, by the way, and her intestinal tract doubles as a life model for Master Cleanse classes. She and I enter our 30s together. We’re working on our happy chops. We’re letting ourselves get there. We’re getting there.

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[1] If you ever want to experience a facsimile of canine anal gland odor, and you live in the Philadelphia Area, go to the foyer of the Target on Aramingo Avenue. I’m not sure how it happened, but it smells exactly like Josephine’s anal glands.

The Embrace of 360 Degrees: Matt Dineen

The 360 Months zine is here! Replete with the stunning cover art by my sister Sarah Dineen, it contains 30 essays by 30 people sharing their thoughts about turning 30--in 72 pages. If you are in Philadelphia, come check out the zine release event at Wooden Shoe Books at 704 South Street at 7:00 pm.

Here is my essay from the zine in honor of today, my 30th birthday. Enjoy! Also, check back next week for the rest of the essays. I'll start posting the remainder on Tuesday. Thanks for reading!
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Life really does come full circle sometimes. I guess this is no surprise since our lives are not single linear journeys of constant progress. We are on a continuum that ebbs and flows and our personal histories often have the pesky tendency to repeat themselves. Our current selves are an amalgamation of all of our ups and downs, and the journey we’re on is a complex one.

On the cusp of 30, I feel like I’m 15 again. Half a lifetime ago I spent the summer washing dishes at Nonnie’s Country Kitchen in Orleans, MA—my first job. I was paid under the table, in cash, to scrape the remains of chocolate chip pancakes larger than my face, scrub lipstick stains off coffee mugs, and listen to the classic rock station that the sexist cook would sing along to all morning. It feels like yesterday.

Actually, it was yesterday.

I arrived at my new job to discover an envelope in the back room with my name scrawled in full-caps: MATT. It contained a (small) pile of 20 dollar bills for my previous week of labor. After counting the bills, I stuffed the envelope in my backpack, grabbed a glass of ice water, and squeezed into a fresh pair of bright-yellow dishwashing gloves. Something was different though.

Instead of elderly retirees filling Nonnie’s counter (and inhaling her second-hand Lucky Strike smoke), there were tables full of people gazing into laptop computers, sipping lattes and eating pasta salad. Instead of AC/DC and Van Halen on the transistor radio in the back, Modest Mouse and Arcade Fire were playing on an iPod through the surround-sound speakers of the café. Everything has changed. But as I stood in front of the industrial sink scrubbing lipstick off a coffee mug it hit me that, actually, everything has stayed the same. In one week, I will be a 30 year old dishwasher with a college degree.

How has my life reverted to this, 15 years later?

It would be pretty easy to wake up on the morning of my 30^th birthday in despair that my life is not going anywhere; paralyzed by an internalized classism, making me feel like an utter failure of a human being. Luckily, I have dedicated a lot of my time since school to analyzing, rejecting, and documenting alternatives to the dominant culture that defines people by what they do for money, first and foremost. I have spent more than half of a decade now interviewing activists and artists about the dilemma of following their passions, doing what they truly love, while surviving in a cutthroat capitalist society. So I have thought about this stuff a lot. 

Over the years, when people I meet ask me, “What do you do?” the answer is always complicated. “Well,” I’ll reply. “It depends what you mean.” We are all so much more than our wage jobs. We are complex, multidimensional creatures. And this should be celebrated.

As I approach 30, I think back to that requisite thought exercise throughout many of our childhoods: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

Is this it? Am I grown up now? At one point, I wanted to be a professional baseball player. Apparently I told my mother (who was 29 when she had me) that I would become rich as a Major League star and buy her a house. She lovingly reminds me of this broken promise every now and then. Sorry mom!

It has been essential for me to talk to people who have spent their lives redefining what success means—prioritizing happiness and community over the accumulation of wealth and power. This is also true of the aging process.

In my mid- to late-20’s it was really inspiring to talk to people in their 30’s who were truly embracing getting older. Actually, I have found that if you ask people who have passed the 30 year milestone, almost across the board they will talk about how much better life is than in their 20’s. So why is it then that many twenty-somethings in our society are so scared of this moment?   

I wear a pin on my jacket that reads: “Growing up is awesome!” The person that created (and gave me) this pin explained that it was in response to the popular subcultural slogan: “Growing up is giving up.”

In a culture that fetishizes youth and perpetuates “glory days” mythology, that teaches us to fear and misunderstand the natural cycles of life, embracing one’s 30’s is a radical act. 

The vision I have for my 30’s is to actualize all of the things that I talked about doing in my 20’s. I want to take inspiration from, and further cultivate, the best aspects of my youthful past. Simultaneously, I want to learn from the mistakes I’ve made, the low points of my personal continuum. This is not to say that it will be easy or that history won’t continue to occasionally repeat itself. My life will inevitably come full circle once again, but I am hopeful for what the next 360 degrees holds for me. Turning 30 is awesome. I am not giving up.
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Matt Dineen lives in Philadelphia, where he turned 30 on April 7, 2011. Contact him at: passionsandsurvival(at)gmail(dot)com

Permission Granted: Mary Tasillo

I met Mary Tasillo through our amazing mutual friend Johanna Marshall. After both growing up on Cape Cod, Johanna and I surprisingly discovered that we had become neighbors in West Philadelphia a couple years ago. I don't know Mary well, but from the various dinner parties we've shared in Johanna's kitchen I can attest that she is a genuinely good person. Mary seems to always have a really cool project going on too. I'm excited about checking out Soapbox, her new independent publishing center.

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I was a pretty early starter on figuring out a direction in life – not that I ever could have pictured present day Mary as 8-year-old Mary, or even 15-year-old Mary. Of course, 15-year-old Mary did not actually think she would make it past 20. She could not envision it at all. Perhaps this has freed me to feel right on target with everything I have been doing surrounding 30, since I had no notions of 30 at such a formative age.

But the pieces of me that encompass creativity, text, image-making, hand crafting, and a life surrounded by books were present early on, and coalesced after a fashion in college (by which point I’d figured out that life got better year after year and that I was definitely going to see life well past twenty). This sent me to graduate school at 24 to get an MFA in Book Arts and Printmaking. In a way this early clarity only delayed the floundering, because to pursue an arts degree is never to pursue any kind of clear career path. Which is how I found myself in and out of various jobs, interspersed with taking time off from working, throughout the latter part of my twenties, while continuing to make art, land the occasional residency, and present at arts conferences. At twenty-eight I landed a day job doing administrative work for an architect. Architects are workaholics. They don’t take any time off, and they don’t like it when you do (even though, as creative types, they like that you are an artist). By twenty-nine, I was plotting my escape from the day job for the architect. Of course, this was right after the economy tanked, and while I was very lucky to still have a job working for an architect, I was going to be hard pressed to get, for example, a job at an arts non-profit.

I’ve never been one to set practical goals. If I were, where would I be? You have to think about where you’d like to be and point yourself towards it. Thus, while working forty hours a week at a desk, and juggling occasional teaching gigs besides, I set a goal that at 30 I would make a transition into teaching and freelancing. Also, sitting at my desk one August day, I decided to start a community print space and zine library. I’d been talking around the idea with various folks for several years now, but had lost the conviction I’d had straight out of graduate school that I could be involved in making this a reality. I’m not sure what shifted that day in the late afternoon sun, but I decided that goddammit, I was going to make it happen, however that might look.

Low and behold, a few months later I met someone else who shared the vision of the community space. “Well,” we each thought, “I’m about to turn thirty so it seems like I can do something like this.” Permission granted. Permission granted to do big things and be taken seriously about it.

So at thirty, we bought a house together and started creating the groundwork for a community space on the first floor.

That same summer, at thirty, I landed enough teaching work to launch me out of the office job into the world of adjuncting and freelance. Maybe this is backwards, in certain circles, to be leaving stability and health insurance for something more piecemeal and unfinished, a choice of process over product. But in my view, the ability to keep the support under one’s feet while walking this path is a thing of beauty (if awkward at moments). Permission granted.

Thus, still early in Year 31, I find myself winding down after the inaugural event, a zine library opening and reading, for The Soapbox: Philadelphia’s Independent Publishing Center. Not even two years after that decision one August afternoon, the community print space is a reality – even if we are not yet 100% set up for community printing. My jobs consist of a combination of editorial work, teaching, book conservation, and art cataloging. And it is not the wisdom, but the permission of 30, that allowed all this to happen. (Sure, plus some leg work I put in through my twenties. The work, experimentation, and exploration I did created momentum.) Rather than serving as a benchmark, 30 has allowed me to let go of any notions of being finished, in terms of life planning and choosing a path. What a miracle to find life still getting better year after year, when 15-year-old Mary, who was finding life as an adolescent to be more difficult each year, could not envision life past 20.

My Next Great Adventure: Wedge Wegman

I think we all have those people in our lives that we wish we could see more of, whether they live in the same neighborhood or on the other side of the globe. Wedge Wegman is one of those people for me. I met Wedge in Philly in the Fall of 2009 when Wooden Shoe Books was moving 2 blocks down South Street to its current location. She had a pickup truck out front that a group of us loaded up with boxes of books and other remnants from the old space. Since then, Wedge and I have become friends through our mutual love of punk rock and baseball. She is one of the most generous and inspiring people I've met in Philly and since I've recently moved down the street from her, I'm hoping we'll see a lot more of each other.

Check out Wedge's company Sickening Thud Productions, online at: sickeningthud.com

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How can I be writing about turning 30?  I still feel like I’m a teenager sometimes. Like I’m fresh out of high school and ready to make my own way out in the world.

But, then it hits me. I’m almost three decades old. Fuck….I still have anxiety dreams about forgetting my locker combination and getting lost on my way to history class. You’d think that by now the dreams would have shifted to some real life anxiety, like getting hit by a car while riding my bike. But, no, my mind hasn’t wrapped itself around the idea that I’m an adult.

I cried on the night before my 13^th birthday. I had no desire to grow up. NONE! And a 12-year-old me thought that on that annual day around 6am I would magically become an adult. By the time I graduated high school I figured adulthood would find me when it wanted to. So, I stopped worrying about it.

While I waited for that inevitable day of maturity, I started my life. Instead of fretting about the unknown, I enjoyed living. And somewhere along the way, I forgot to be scared to grow older. Because it doesn’t mean I have to grow up.

And I absolutely refuse to grow up.

What does that mean, anyway? 60 years ago, if you hadn’t married, spawned, and bought a house in the suburbs by 30 then people wondered what was wrong with you. But today we see more and more people living the single life, going to school for multiple degrees, traveling the world with nothing but a backpack…..things that would have made our great-grandparents uninvite us over for the holidays. 

What is the standard of maturity in our society today? Most people I know would agree that, for a HEALTHY adult, you reach maturity when you no longer rely on someone else to care for you. At least I’ve accomplished THAT in my 30 years.

My mother worries about me. I know she does, even though she tries to deny it, because she buys me socks and underwear. (One important lesson I’ve learned in life is to ALWAYS accept a gift of socks and/or underwear!) But, I pay my bills and I keep a roof over my head. Not growing up doesn’t mean that I can’t take care of myself. I just might not have the life that my parents think I should have built for myself by my 30^th year.

I’ve kept my cat alive for 3 years now. That’s got to count for something, right?

Remember that time when anything was possible and you were gonna do EVERYTHING and go EVERYWHERE!? Well, I still get that way all the time. There’s just so much left in the world to visit and experience.

I’m not bothered about turning 30. Fuck, if Fox Mulder was able jump on moving trains full of aliens when he was in his 30’s, then I’ve got nothing to fear. BRING IT ON! My 30’s are just my next great adventure. The next chapter in my story.

Lately, I’ve been hearing some chatter from the Evangelists on the street. It seems that they believe their savior is coming back to town on May 21, 2011. But, I’m here to set the record straight. Jeezus is not coming to take anyone up to their everlasting utopian bliss. He’s coming into Philly to celebrate my 30^th birthday. I invited him because he does these neat party tricks and I won’t have to spend much on alcohol.

It’s gonna be one hell of a shindig!

Climbing Up the Hill: Pamela Roy

It's funny how two people can start in different places, traveling separate routes, but occasionally end up in the same place. Twelve years ago(!), Pamela Roy and I arrived at Bard College on the same early August day. For the next 3 weeks, we were classmates in the Language & Thinking seminar for incoming freshmen. Pam was one of my favorite people I met at Bard that year. Since then, we have both lived in different parts of the Midwest and New England and, a decade after first meeting, we find ourselves both in Philadelphia trying to make sense of adulthood and life.   

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Looking through some old family photos, I see a picture of me, age 6, with my Uncle Bill. My uncle is wearing a plaid button-down and sitting behind a cake. I am standing to his right, in a pink striped shirt, arm around him, smiling. From behind his giant eyeglass lenses, his eyes also appear to be smiling. But on top of his head, cocked at an angle, sits a black paper party hat, with white writing that garishly announces, “Over the Hill”. 

It was his 30^th birthday party.

Now, approaching that same mark myself, I wonder what my 30^th birthday party will look like in photos, years later. It will be different from my uncle’s. I will not have any nieces or nephews in the picture, an ex-wife (or husband) under my belt, or a condominium in Providence. Sometimes it is hard to tell whether or not 30 is an appropriate milestone anymore. Maybe as a whole we are slowing the rush to “settle down”. 

Turning 30 does call for reflection about how I’ve changed in my adult life. Some of this recollection is not so deep. For example, I refuse to wear clothing with holes in it anymore, no matter how cute it once was. When before I could have been convinced to be outdoors all day long in the sun with no sunblock, now I cover up and slather that stuff on like it’s going out of style. There are also the bigger things. I still do not have a spouse, own a home, and have no offspring (nor blog). What do I have? A dog, a Master’s degree, and a job that is important and challenging. And, I have a clearer vision of who I am and what I want from life. Why allow myself to feel inadequate just because I am turning 30? Why does this age move us to a battle of the “haves” and “have-nots”?

You know “Over the Hill” – as in, “it’s all downhill from here.” How can it be? I am barely getting started. Perhaps this used to be and is still the case when, by 30, people have it all “figured out.” However, I know that even at 30, I still have many life decisions to make, some of which I will make more than once. I am not “Over the Hill”. I am still climbing up.

The Return of Saturn: Traci Yoder

It is my pleasure to introduce you to one of the most solid people I know: Traci Yoder. I wish Traci was in Philly when I first moved here. It took about a year of staffing at the Wooden Shoe for our paths to finally cross, when she relocated to this city and quickly joined the collective. Traci has saved my life during a particularly difficult period recently, and this is not unusual for her. She is that superhero of a friend that a number of people in her life count on for providing sanity, support, and masterful Tarot card readings. Traci is our rock, helping us feel better about the world and ourselves.  

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For those who know me well, it should come as no surprise that I choose to reflect on turning 30 by writing about Saturn Return. If you pay no attention to astrology, or have never heard of the return of Saturn, a quick Google search will give you all the details. To summarize- Saturn Return refers to the time when the planet returns to the place in its orbit it occupied when a person was born. It takes approximately 28.5 years for Saturn to make a full rotation, which means that the first Saturn Return begins around the age of 28 and lasts for two years. The thirtieth birthday, therefore, falls just as Saturn Return is coming to a close, and provides a sense of culmination and completion to the astrological process that is considered to be the transition from the first phase of life into adulthood.

Let me be frank- Saturn Return can be one of the most difficult periods in life. It forces people to define who they are, what they want to do with their lives, and to what degree their lives up until that point have reflected their own values and goals. For those lucky people who spent the years leading up to Saturn Return following a path that felt right for them, they will experience this process as one of solidification and success. For those who spent the first part of their lives following the expectations of others, this period will be less pleasant. Unfortunately, most people seem to fall in the latter category, myself included.

Two years ago, I was living in Gainesville, FL. I had a long-term partner who I adored and owned a beautiful house. I was well on my way to finishing my PhD in Anthropology and beginning my life as a professor and researcher. I had accomplished a great deal and had the love and support of family, friends, and mentors. Everyone, including myself, thought that my life was on-course.

And then…THE RETURN OF SATURN. To be brief, the next two years went something like this: I left the Anthropology program, started another graduate program in Library Studies, got a new job in a university library, ended my five-year relationship, moved out of my house, quit my job, left Florida and moved back to my hometown, left my hometown and moved to Philadelphia to live with one of my oldest friends, started a new relationship, worked at a restaurant to pay the bills, ended the new relationship, changed roommates, left the dead-end job in favor of a slightly better job as a free-lance editor, and got back into radical organizing.

Why did all this happen? Honestly, there was no event or stimulus from the outside world that pushed me to change my entire life. Nothing but a nagging suspicion on my part that something wasn’t right…and that this feeling could not be ignored. Not everyone experiences such dramatic changes during their Saturn Return (I’ll admit I have a penchant for building and destroying things). However, my story certainly reflects how much a person’s life can change in a short period of time, and how those changes (which barely make sense at the time) can lead to a radically different path.

A few lessons I learned through Saturn Return, which hopefully will be useful to folks who are experiencing theirs at the moment:

You’ll feel alone most of the time. Learn to appreciate solitude and enjoy your own company. It may take a while. I can’t pretend I always handled my sense of aloneness gracefully. I’m not terribly proud to say that some days during this two-year period, I hid in my room all day, watching Lost or staring blankly out the window. However, being alone forced me to face the parts of myself I didn’t like very much and led me to eventually change them (after I ran out of Lost episodes).

Everything will seem less fun. Drinking, drugs, sex, partying…whatever it is people do to suppress their anxieties and emotions will no longer provide the same sense of comfort. I stopped drinking entirely during my Saturn Return. Being in rooms full of people no longer distracted me from my own thoughts. Focusing on relationships to avoid my own problems proved disastrous. Finally, I stopped looking for distractions and got down to working on myself and my life.

You will have to give things up. Saturn Return is a time when it becomes necessary to leave behind anything in our lives that does not reflect who we are. This period reflects a transition from the safety and security of the past to the unknown possibilities of the future. The first response most people have is to cling to what is familiar and try to ignore the increasingly strong feelings pushing them to make changes. Don’t do that. Relationships, jobs, and situations will pass out of your life at this time. Let them go.

During my Saturn Return, I felt like I was destroying the structures in my life with no guarantee that the future would be any better. I was exhausted, overwhelmed, and not sure any of the choices I was making were the right ones. I felt older, wiser, and not necessarily happier. It’s hard to write about Saturn Return without sounding grim, but  I don’t want that to be what folks take away from this essay. Saturn’s influence is serious, sobering, and sometimes devastating, but it serves an important purpose.

Which brings me to my thirtieth birthday, which took place in August of last year. My Saturn Return was over, I lived in a new city, and had a new job, new home, and new projects. In hindsight, all the painful choices I had made along the way finally made sense. At 30, I’m happier than I have ever been, and can clearly see that the life I was following up until my Saturn Return had always been more about pleasing my family, friends, and teachers than about doing what I felt was worthwhile. I destroyed and recreated my entire world, and now I can see that I didn’t actually lose anything by doing so…

My Thirtieth Year to Heaven

by Emily McNair

“It was my thirtieth year to heaven...” I’ve, for as long as I can remember, loved the words of Dylan Thomas. From my dad’s annual Christmas Eve reading of A Child’s Christmas in Wales, to high school poetry recitations, to today, when I thought about what I would write for this blog, when the first thing that came to mind was this line from “Poem in October.” I’m shamed to say that my (purloined from my father so many years ago) copy of his collected poems was more than a little dusty but the words came back to my mind as I read. I once knew this poem by heart, learned it for a competition, but I can admit in my thirtieth year that it was a show-offy endeavor -- long, complicated rhythms, tongue-tangling word combinations -- and it never honestly occurred to me that I would arrive at this year in my life. That I’d rise one day “in the rainy [spring]/ And walk abroad in a shower of all my days,” reflecting on, reliving the milestones, the landmarks, times when I “... whispered the truth of [my] joy.”

My life is so far from where I imagined it would be. Granted, my first childhood aspiration was to be a hot air balloon. Not possible? A whale then. What? No? Alright, a pig farmer. I’m happy to say that last one didn’t pan out -- I thought the pigs would be raised more for companionship (a la Charlotte’s Web) than consumption. But nevermind that. Then for the second half of my life so far, I imagined I’d be living abroad, most likely in Nepal, studying, working, doing something. But somehow I’m here in Philadelphia. More rooted everyday, some days happy about this, some days horrified, many days just ambivalent. Is rooted trapped? Is this thirtieth year the last I have to break free? Do I want to?

For me, the only real hang-up, the only loss I feel about turning 30 this coming April is the expiration of my first adult (10 year) passport. The first two I was glad to shed -- a portrait of a child, a cringingly awful and awkward moment of 16. But this passport is the story of my young adult life, my proudest moments, my most fearful, my most adventurous, my most selfless, my most selfish, my loneliest and my most gorgeously solitary. For most of my late teens and early twenties, my life was my travels, mostly alone and spanning 6 continents by my 23rd birthday. My passport -- beat up, stained, sticky here and there with immigration control sticker residue -- reflects those years in so many ways; it’s the old style, with an indentation from the photo. Laminated! The extra pages stapled in oh-so-officially, out of sequence and slightly smaller. The unassuming quarter-page stamps. The full page sticker visas. The extensions. The re-entry permits. The exit stamps. Perpetual motion, never more than stopping by, passing through.

Ten years ago I never would have imagined this life I’ve created now, its chilling and deeply comforting feeling of permanence. I’ve always enjoyed making decisions, big decisions, life-changing decisions. But I realize now that -- while clearly many of these decisions have shaped my life and who I am -- none of them were as final, as permanent as they seemed at the time, and this decision-making proclivity of mine has set me on a definite, increasingly ineluctable course. Good or bad -- it just is.

I bought the house that is sometimes my joyful home and sometimes the stone around my neck. I adopted the dog I can’t remember now not having. I accepted the job that challenges, satisfies and sometimes frustrates the shit out of me. I said yes to the proposal and will soon be marrying the only person I’ve ever actually enjoyed the feeling of depending on. The person who has -- by loving me truly and wholly -- redefined my whole conception of self. Of what I want my life to be, of the genuine okay-ness of the fact that my life will, in fact, keep going forward and never be the same as it was, moment to moment, day to day, year to year.

“It was my thirtieth/ Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon/ Though the town below lay leaved with October blood./ O may my heart’s truth/Still be sung/ On this high hill in a year’s turning.”

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Emily McNair is a fellow graduate of Bard College. She works for a nonprofit that provides community-based services to people with psychiatric and/or addictive disorders, developmental disabilities, and those who are homeless, in the greater Philadelphia area.

James Generic: Life at 29

I first met James Generic on the Internet. I was setting up a book tour for an author that wanted to speak at the Wooden Shoe, Philadelphia venerable anarchist bookstore, and James had recently become an events-committee-of-one. We corresponded about the logistics of the event for a couple weeks and everything ended up going smoothly. Less than a year later, I moved to Philly from Northampton, MA and found myself being trained by James one Saturday night at the Shoe. Eventually I joined the events committee and have continued to enjoy working with him to bring great radical speakers to the South Street infoshop.

James is currently writing a book about the Wooden Shoe and blogs about Philly sports at Stadium Vagabonds. Without further adieu, here is the first submission to 360 Months...
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I feel kinda funny writing this, because it feels somewhat like writing an obituary. 30 is not old, just a milestone. You don't really have any more excuses. You're supposed to have your shit together at this point, be ready to move forward. I still have a year and a half before I turn 30, and it doesn't really concern me... Okay, maybe it does. Just a bit. I used to have my shit together. I certainly did. But the last year was a tough year. I thought that I had it together. A long term, decent paying job. I was married to the love of my life. I owned my rowhome. I had it made by most standards. I am well-known and generally well-liked, with just a few enemies made over the years (fuck 'em, anyway).

But things started to tumble, as I put more and more of my energy into organizing and volunteering. As the pressure constantly mounted, my marriage was the first to crack--to the tune of many tears and wrenching of the heart. They say that losing the love of your life to a breakup is almost worse than losing someone to death. I was a damn wreck for a long time, drowning in a great downward spiral like toilet water sucking down the hole of death. Then, in July, my boss hit me across the face, and I quit my job, walking away with unemployment benefits assured (since I quit with good cause). Those two combined to make my continued home ownership impossible, so my home is up for sale. I know, I know, boohoo. A lot of people my age never ever had those things in the first place. Like I said, the last year was my fall from grace. I had a nice writing project to do, but damn, writing has a lot more highs and lows than a 9-5er. It was a whole lot of adjustments.

So here I stand, at the crossroads. My 20's are nearly done. Somedays I hit the bottle to stay sane, trying to figure out how to get my shit together. One of my core values is that I am pretty reliable and dependable. I think I have maintained that basic core. That's really the last thing I have left. I have never given that up, even if I am notoriously flakey when showing to parties or big social events. I'll never leave you hanging if we have 1 on 1 hangouts planned, and I have very rarely failed in my political work with the Wooden Shoe collective or Solidarity.

A lot of people just get their start at 30. Like a lot of coaches or actors or writers or whatever. Then again, life is almost done at 30 if you're a football player, as a career. Its all perspective. My parents had me when they were in the early 30's. Oh shit... that's coming up, if I wanna reproduce. Something that my 20's taught me very well is that as much as you want to plan out your life, it doesn't quite work like that. You can't plan shit. Everything falls apart eventually. Flesh rots, as do everything that humans build, eventually. You can keep it going, but its a race against time. Eventually it fails. Eventually we die. This isn't a surrender, but just a recognition. You have to keep trying to swim upstream, because otherwise you'll drown, and just become another floater.

But you know what? What about 40? I kind of look forward to being the dirty old man at the bar who makes terrible jokes. Maybe to some of my friends in their early 20's or late teens, I already am that guy. Who knows though? As long as I can keep drinking beer, watching baseball, and staying involved in social movements for a better world, I think I'll generally be happy and content. Contentish, anyway. So I don't have a career right now. I was getting bored with libraries anyway. So I don't have marriage anymore, and god I miss her somedays, but maybe I'm better as a single guy. So I don't have a house anymore. Maybe it's better not to be tied down like that (says the guy who hates leaving Philadelphia.) Sure, I feel lost a lot, feeling out the days, but you gotta wander the desert before finding the land of milk and honey, donchya? Or drown in the Red Sea.

I can grow a full beard now. That's different than when I turned 20.