Release: Tami Devine

The first year I lived in Northampton I used to go to the Smith College library to check my email. One day in the early fall I was sitting at one of the computers when I noticed a familiar face two monitors. Well, I wasn’t actually confident about the familiarity so I logged into Friendster (remember that?) and did a search for Tami Devine who, sure enough, had just started a grad program at UMass-Amherst. I came over and whispered a one word question: “Bard?” It was that moment that we became good friends since, although we sat in the same row at commencement with the other D’s, we never hung out in college.  I miss Tami a lot. Her unique wit and elegance are almost from another era. Tami is one of a kind.

---

For those of you Class of ‘99ers who are already thirty, I’m still 29, suckas! It will be that way until October, when I’ll join your pitiful ranks of over the hillers. The casual “checking people’s age out” and seeing where I stand has not left me. A lady on Judge Judy was a divorced mom of 3 at 22. My college buddy is a homeowner and mom at 30. My colleague is a 40 year old divorced mom looking for love on Match. My parents continue to evolve and seek enrichment in their employment and activities going on 60. These numbers, once so damning (remember the “old” Bard students who were like, 26?), now seem such useless measurements.

Thirty meant something different to our parents, who probably had babies + a house + a wedding ring and all that jazz. Thirty seemed to be the arbitrary “I’d like to married by...” date when I was a youngster playing Barbies. In my child mind, like that would give me a whole decade to spread my wings and establish a career for myself GUFFAW!!!! The cruelty of it all, if little me could see me now! I’m Masters degreed-out now, sometimes a caricature of the overqualified & mortified crowd. I’m working similar jobs to those I worked before my fancy degree. But you all know the story. We’re questioning it all. We want better. Some days I wonder why I didn’t go for my MRS degree ...hardy har. Like after all that angsty riot grrling, listening to PJ Harvey + reading bell hooks in coffeeshops, I like to think I’d make a pretty damn good SAHM.

A few years ago one of the issues I was struggling with was that I didn’t feel like an “adult,” and it was all tied up with how my parents kind of never let me be an adult. I won’t bore you with all that now. But I kept going back to that fetal position. While my friends were spreading their wings I was like just dipping my feet in adult life through sublets and vacuous pursuit of internships. There was always a feeling of “if I fail, I’ll just move back home.” I wasn’t really trying, I guess, the clicking life clock paralyzing me into a dull anxiety.

Well, while I wasn’t looking all that kind of Adultness happened to me. I stopped blocking my own life joy. Volleyball - I’ve loved you since age 12 - but art school and glam rock emo boyfriends made me feel like I was a dork for loving you. I got the courage to get out there + play because I LOVE IT. I got two cats, recently a dog, and all that “responsibility” I used to desperately dodge from, I now seem to crave. I’ve met my “Ken” of sorts. That warm glow of family is hard to trade in for some of the ugliness of younger days. But I haven’t said “I do”; and maybe the absence of anything carved into marble is a relief.

One night last summer, I pulled my car over to the side of Route 9 to remove a cat who was struck by a car to its woodsy grassy resting place. That *choice* of putting my compassion into action and experience the grief of the loss of life - whilst blocking traffic- was a poignant moment of connection to my adult self. I’ve had the mildest feeling that something pure and organic was flowing out of me - I didn’t feel like I was trying to be someone else. I’m hoping for the next decade to put that feeling of connection to my true self - and what I believe to be REAL in this world- into action less seldomly. I don’t want to be the passer-by.

“Release” has been my mantra over the past year, and I’ve felt really strongly like I am shedding skin, shedding stale friendships that no longer nourish me, holding me back in their superficiality. There are those who will be left behind in a cloud of smoke, never to be seen again, except in facebook land. As will you too—left behind as people move on, past you.

We couldn’t have imagined it back then, but this is what thirty looks like. I think I’m doing all right...and so are you.

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!
---

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.
---

Matt Dineen lives in Philadelphia, where he turned 30 on April 7, 2011. Contact him at: passionsandsurvival(at)gmail(dot)com

The Deciding Incisor: Lauren Johnson

I became friends with Lauren Johnson during our final semester at Bard College. Two days after our graduation she gave me a tour of her hometown of Great Barrington, MA and the campus of Bard’s baby cousin, Simon’s Rock. Great Barrington just happened to be where she had returned for the summer and where I had an appointment to contest a speeding ticket. Since then, Lauren has popped back into my life while visiting a mutual friend when I lived in Northampton, and again more recently in Philadelphia. In addition to being hilariously witty (see below), Lauren is a sweet and sincere friend. If I ever need to hide underground, I’m sure she and Dan will graciously let me live in the backyard of their Jersey farmhouse with the chickens.

---

I am sitting reclined in an aquamarine blue dental chair, waiting to be seen by a Portuguese dentist.

I have not been to the dentist for about seven years, and all the brochures of cloud-white toothy smiles placed along the countertops are doing a marvelous job of taunting me.  

For the majority of those seven years, I have led an indulgently artistic and nomadic life bereft of dental insurance throughout the Big Apple, North Carolina, and New Jersey, where, at 29 years old, I got my first flat tire on the road to perfect oral health.

I had pretty much shrugged off going to see a dentist baring anything catastrophic, until I recently showed my husband my front tooth whose gum had been receding pretty steadily after noticing it started to look irritated. The words he spoke while painfully wincing were “Holy crap, that’s like Tales From the Crypt!”

Fine.

I signed up for an in-state no-frills dental program, picked the nearest dentist within the network, and here I am—paper bib clipped to my collar and ready for the worst.

The dentist comes in and we start with the x-rays. After each one, the lead cape draped over my chest feels heavier and heavier, and I imagine thick wads of (my) money being plunged down the toilet.

Next up is the cleaning.

Everything is going fine until she gets to The Tooth. “Ooo!,” she says, completely stopping and turning off the drill. “That hurts me just to look at it.” 

She pulls off her mask, and we proceed to have a heart-to-heart. “Why is it that you have not gotten this looked at earlier?” she tells me in her Portuguese accent. I smile and try to explain to her how tough I am. She looks at me solemnly. “You’re very young,” she says. “You have many good tooth years ahead of you, but you need to take care of this to be sure that will happen.” She says she’ll write me a referral to a specialist (more sounds of dollars flushing), and proceeds with the cleaning. I seal the deal with myself to take her advice, wincing as the electricity shoots down my legs as she finishes polishing the base of said tooth.

At 29, I never thought I’d have to start dealing with something so geriatric sounding as receding gums. And though I tend to laugh this sort of stuff off (along with things like gray hairs and how delicious prunes are), this time it’s a bit more awakening. It’s made me nervous. Not only have I been thinking about it constantly and having dreams of my teeth falling out, I’ve also resumed one of my old nervous tics of biting the insides of my cheeks. 

Gross!

When I see the specialist my dentist referred me to, what a mouth-show they will get!

All kidding aside, the timing of this instance could not be more appropriate. I, like many other of my late-twenty-something friends, have been musing about the new decade we’re entering into, and comparing our lists of Top 10 Things to Do Before I’m Thirty.  I’m pretty sure “Pay Attention to your Dental Health” will trump “Lose 10 Pounds,” and “Become a Model” (Quiz: How many models have a horror show host gumline? Zero!). However, I must say, as I grow longer in the tooth (sorry, had to), it will be learned moments like these that I’ll stow away to help me make more self-informed, wise, and adult decisions as I turn 30, 40, 50…

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

---

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!

Taking the Long Way Around: Colette Hall Vander Plas (formerly Ryder-Hall)

Colette Ryder-Hall was the first person I met in high school that did a zine. I'm pretty sure I didn't know what a zine was until I met her actually. One early issue of Looks Yellow, Taste Red featured a positive review of my sloppy 9th grade punk band PME, generously comparing us to my favorite band Dead Kennedys. Colette was also the first person I knew who dropped out of school on political/ethical grounds and, through her zine, taught me about Grace Llewellyn's classic The Teenage Liberation Handbook. This made Colette a mentor of sorts and definitely an inspiration, whether she knew it or not.

--- 

First, I dropped out of high school. A year later, bored and frightened of enduring another Cape Cod winter, I went to college. After 5 years of enlightening but rather aimless higher education, at the ripe old age of 23, I graduated with a BA. I felt like a prisoner being let out of prison. I was terrified and I wanted back in. So I opted for a MA in creative writing. This involved moving to the middle of the country, discovering I hated teaching freshman comp and taking a job at a natural foods coop to cover the unexpected expenses of being a grad student (steep bar tabs and pricey plane tickets back home for major holidays, mainly). At the age of 25, I graduated again. I stayed at the coop job until I went insane at the age of 28 and realized I had to find a meaningful path in life (which did not involve the retail and merchandising of organic produce), or die trying. I quit my job and drove around the country in a blue Toyota Tercel for awhile, then returned to Iowa, where I went back to school (again) and got married. This is why now, at the age of 31, I find myself in the position of many 22-year-olds: about to graduate, broke and waiting on a Peace Corps application that has been in medical review for several months already.

I do feel old sometimes now. First, while most people assume I'm still in my early 20's when they meet me, I'm pretty sure they're not looking closely. I have collected a lot of white hairs in the past ten years. And I have officially moved past the time when wearing mini-skirts is a good idea. Second, it seems that in the Midwest people tend to get married and have families younger than was the norm on the East Coast. I got married at the age of 29 and while we plan on having a family, it's going to be a while. Being surrounded by people in their twenties who are far more "settled down" than me is weird and it fills me with irrational fear that I've wasted my most fertile years already.

Mostly, I am grateful to have entered my thirties. While the intense emotion and creative energy of my teenage years and early twenties made for a lot of excitement and productivity, it was hard. Everything was louder, brighter and potentially emotionally devastating. At the age of 31, I don't care as much and that's okay. I may not be producing a zine every five minutes or hand-crafting bizarre objects in my bedroom while listening to loud, angry music. I may not be routinely having intense heart-to-heart conversations with random people late into the night. I may not be full of righteous anger and a burning desire to assert myself at all times. Instead, I have an inner stability. I don't constantly wonder if I'm crazy. I don't blame everything on myself. I can rest assured that things generally work out, regardless of how much or how little I worry about them. I am becoming more comfortable with myself all the time.

So maybe my situation is a blessing - a chance to experience my early years of adulthood all over again, with the added bonuses of experience, confidence and inner balance.