Things it took me until 30 to learn: Monica Elkinton

Two memories stick out when I think of Monica Elkinton; one during college and one from after we graduated. The first was on “Pi Day,” (3.14) 2003. In addition to being a political activist, Monica was a mathematics major at Bard and invited me to the Math Club’s Pi(e) Party that day. I delightfully ate as many pizza slices and fruit pie as my body could process. I maintained a friendly conversation with Monica as her peers looked at me with scorn as a party crasher. Then the following year, Monica and I both found ourselves in Madison, Wisconsin. I had moved there to immerse myself in the city’s legacy of post-capitalist counter-institutions, while she arrived later to intern at the state’s supreme court for law school. The day after Bush was re-elected Monica invited me to see a Beasties Boys concert, to dance away the inevitable sorrows of the ensuing four years. This is all to say, thank you. She is now a public defender in Alaska, continuing to change the world.

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1. Every day is a blessing.

2. How to buy a house. And what the heck mortgage insurance is.

3. Turns out staying up all night debating philosophy is not a good quality in a romantic partner after all. Doing the dishes and supporting me in my decisions is way better.

4. A taste for very dry wine.

5. That I could be dropped in any city in the world by myself, and make a good adventure out of it.

6. That everyone else is just as scared as I am.

7. The best way to be a friend is to listen.

8. The second best way to be a friend is to have been there.

9. How to invest, and what I will need to retire. (Whoa. Yes.)

10. That if you like your job, then overtime and weekends mean nothing.

11. There is more to you than your job or career.

12. Email, twitter, and facebook can never make up for phone calls and visiting people in person.

13. One-night stands don't make you feel very good.

14. Healthy food actually does.

15. And sleep.

16. Greasy food and beer make your stomach hurt. Maybe that's because it's bad for you.

17. That my parents were making it up as they went along.

18. To buy a slightly used car: not a new one, and not a clunker.

19. That you can try to alter your attitude with whatever chemicals you want, but the people that love you, love the sober you.

20. Being around family is important.

21. That joining the Board means you'll be expected to give a large donation.

22. That I am not an athlete, and that I never will be. Some of us just can't move that way. The closest I will get is to dance. Mostly to folk music.

23. Little kids are awesome. And that we have so much to learn from those younger than us.

24. If making art or music is what you need to stay sane, then for God's sake, do it, even if you're not someone else's idea of “good” at it. If you have fun, and it colors your world, then you're good enough.

25. That I love living in a racially diverse community.

26. With the right time commitment, you are capable of learning any skill you want to learn.

27. How to live on your own time frame. Your urgent doesn't have to be someone else's urgent.

28. Sharing a meal with loved ones is simply the best thing to do.

29. We are all human.

30. All humans respond to a smile from another human. 

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.

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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…

Existential Crisis, Please Go Away: Timothy Sylvia

After being part of the Cape Cod underground music scene in the mid/late-90's, it's nice to know that there are still good people fostering the local scene and documenting its history. Tim Sylvia is one of those people. I didn't know him really well back in the day, but I can still picture him right up by the PA as my band Social Virus played our final shows at the Orleans Juice Bar. Tim was always super supportive and enthusiastic of our music and other bands we played shows with. In addition to playing in a number of bands himself over the years, Tim has been setting up shows, running a distro, and putting out records through his From the Heart Media. A compilation of Cape Cod bands, past and present, is currently in the works. Music communities everywhere need more Tim Sylvias.  
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Warning: This could get messy.

I'm 28, and I'll be 29 in August. At 28, my life is not what I was expecting and/or hoped for. Probably a token and reoccurring statement. Go figure. All I know is I want this existential crisis to go away. I guess that's what you call it. In the current scheme of the news and events of the world, it's hard to decipher if the doom you are experiencing is because of how scary the world is, or because you're actually experiencing a personal existential crisis. I'm having a hard time, that's all I know. If you're a young, creative, or generally just a forward-thinking person, regardless of any standard, I think you are aware of what I am saying. 

Where do we go from here? What can I do? I don't need to touch on specifics. Too many thoughts, too many questions in my head all the time. Anxiety. Do you think the existential crisis 30 years ago was what it is today? It seems like mine is possibly the worst that could come out of my family history. Look at me?  I can't even keep it together. What I'm trying to get at here is I have a hard time even reflecting on myself at the age of 28, because everything I'm personally thinking about is much bigger than me. Existentially I mean. I need to be more selfish, in my own head at least. I need to be more creative. I need to be less afraid. I need to try and be HAPPY! I guess I can try to reflect on myself.

Let's start with my health. I'm a 350 plus pound man with diabetes. Yeah, I know. I've got to do something about this. I really do. That one sentence, I guess... is my whole real existential crisis. If I don't do something, I may not even exist. That's definitely the most important something-to-think-about sentence in my whole life. I'm always working on it. I swear.

Love, will I ever find you? I'm already very damaged by you at 28. Every time I experience love and it goes away, I just feel more lonely the next time I find you gone. Alone and hurt. So hurt. So hurt that I'm afraid of you. I swear I'll never let this happen to me again, every time. Very cautious about you, love.

I don't consider turning 30 a milestone at all, however what one might have accomplished by the age itself. I guess the only standard for this is set by you, and anyone's opinions you value or take into consideration. Like your parents. I oftentimes think I would have taken bigger, more personally risky and controversial leaps of faith had I not worried about what my mother would have thought about what I was doing for the last 28 years. I guess that makes me a momma's boy, too regretful, and more boring than a family-less me would of been. Which are two things I doubt my mother would have wished for me. I love my family, and I love you, Mom.

Some things I want by the time of my 30th birthday are to be out of my head more often. I want to be healthy or healthier, anyhow. I want a better world to live in, with my help. To take bigger leaps. Huge leaps. Last but not least, I want to be out of this existential crisis. The keyword, and I think the general consensus and theme about turning the age of 30, is change. I need change, we need to change.

Coming Home to Bravery: Sarah James

Sarah James and I know each other from our college days. On the cusp of 30 herself, she has been an enthusiastic supporter of this project--even giving it a shout out on her fantastic blog Yum & Yuk. Sarah is currently a legal services attorney in Oregon.
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A year ago I was still reeling from having failed the MA Bar on my first go (by only two points, my pride requires me to tell you). I was working part time for the Census in Boston, going door-to-door bugging people for personal demographic information, and spending my downtime drinking.  My diet consisted of a rotation between Chinese food, frozen potato skins, and pizza. This was not how I imagined my first year after law school. Don’t get me wrong, there were some great things too – a supportive family, a loving boyfriend, wonderful friends (many of whom were sharing the same struggles as me), my health.  But I was broke, jobless, out of shape, uninsured, and pretty despondent about my future.

I am 3 months short of 30. 

When I hit 29 my best friend (the one I count on for everything, including keeping me up to date on my astrological forecast), sent me info about the “Saturn Return.”  The main thing I remember, the thing that has stuck with me, was something that explained your Saturn Return as a time in your life where, if you weren’t living in line with your core beliefs and values, your life would go into upheaval to get you re-aligned.  To me, this is what turning 30 is all about.

Last May, after an impulsive, in-my-underwear swim in Walden Pond and a powerful pang of longing for small town life, I casually called a friend in Oregon.  He told me about a job opening at legal services in the town where I grew up, at the organization I volunteered for in high school.  Within 24 hours, I applied, interviewed for, was offered, and accepted the position. A week later my boyfriend and I started the drive cross-country.

To summarize the 9 months since then, the thoughts I’ve had, the choices I’ve made, would be impossible without boring you to tears. But, in short: the first thing I did was quit drinking (a backlash against having spent much of the previous year in a bar). Living with my parents (temporarily!), having no money (legal services), and being sober (for the most part), my social life was….real quiet. I decided to take this extra time to work towards a long-term goal I never thought I would reach: completing a marathon and a half Ironman triathlon. I began running, for the first time in my life. My now-long-distance relationship ended, tearfully and sadly. During the day, I struggled to try to learn a job for which I’d received no training, working with clients who couldn’t afford to have me f*ck up. I fell in love with a woman who shared my name, and a few months later she broke my heart.

And then I began the celibacy quest. When people hear that I decided to be celibate for 6 months, they mainly just think about the sex aspect of it, which is understandable. But more than just not having sex, it’s meant taking a break from the relentless quest to get approval from other people, the endless search for someone who would make me feel like enough. And then one weekend I decided to go to church (the church I found by Googling “gay friendly churches Oregon” – a modern spiritual quest for sure), and this past week, after 7 months of attendance, I formally became a member, with the blessing of our lesbian minister.

There is so much more to say about all of this and I, obviously, could ramble forever. This past year has been an exercise in both stretching my boundaries and returning to a place in myself that feels like home, returning to the “me” I spent my 20s battling. And that’s what excites me so much about turning 30, and the coming decade – coming home to bravery.

Am I always this positive? Hell no. Every day I worry my ovaries are drying up, that I will be “alone forever,” that my savings account will never be sufficient enough to stop this constant anxiety, that I am failing at my job every day, that I will never live in the same place as all my scattered, wonderful friends. But if I could survive my 20's – that dark, scary, insecure, brittle, self-doubting time – I’m ready for the 30's. One year later, I live in a small Oregon town where I work as a legal services attorney. I live with two friends, two dogs, and my first garden. I’m training for my first marathon and triathlon. I don’t drink or do drugs. I cut out most processed foods. I’m celibate, church-going, and sugar-free. Yep.