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.

---

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. 

Fork in the Road: Jared Souther

I have known Jared Souther for 17 years. We met in Mr. Bruce's 7th grade science class and quickly became good friends. We would talk on the phone for hours about music and, by our freshman year at Nauset Regional High School, we started a band together with our friend Adam Wentworth on drums that lasted into my first year of college. It would be impossible to do justice to this experience creating music with Jared, our lasting friendship, and how punk rock changed our lives, in the limitations of this space. I'll just say that all of this is completely inseparable to who I am today. Jared is one of the most talented and inspiring people I've known. He has continued to write music and play in bands all of these years, and something tells me that he won't be slowing down anytime soon.   

Check out Jared's current band Revilers online at: Revilers.net
---

Besides the wrinkles around my eyes, the several remaining hairs on the top of my head, and the pain in my knees every morning, I feel pretty much the same as when I was a teenager. I will be turning thirty on May twenty-third of this year and other than it being a nice even number that our culture has declared a milestone, it doesn't feel much different to me than any other birthday. 

I remember at the beginning of my freshman year in high school, we were asked to write a letter to ourselves that we would get back as seniors. Waiting four years seemed like a lifetime back then. After all, four years prior I was in elementary school. Oddly enough, I still have the letter today, a whopping fifteen years later. In it I wrote about looking forward to playing my first show with my first band, Generic. I wondered if I'd still be playing shows at the old age of eighteen. Back then I owned a cheap 4-track cassette recorder that I learned to make demos on. At that point I only recorded one band, but I was very concerned that I would still be involved in recording. It was also in utter importance that I had at least one tattoo. When senior year finally rolled around, I had no problem meeting such strenuous goals. Funny that nowhere in the letter did it mention college, high school, or what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was only concerned with playing in a band, recording music and getting tattooed. Oddly enough, reading this letter again at almost thirty, I am concerned with playing in a band, recording music, and giving tattoos. Oh, how I've matured so much. 

Of course there are some things that have changed. Today, I find that things like quality vacuum cleaners bring me happiness. I now embrace the quiet natural beauty of Cape Cod's off season. I even have a wife (which is still a shocker to most of my friends and family).

For me, thirty is a confusing fork in the road, representing where you're currently at in life, and where you think you're supposed to be going. Naturally, by growing up, some things change. I truly enjoy coming home to my wife and going for a walk, or having a quiet evening watching a movie, etc. But I also still like getting in a shitty, rusted van with my friends, driving to an unknown city, meeting new people and playing loud, abrasive punk rock. I see no problem living what some consider a contradictory lifestyle. In fact, it makes me extremely happy because everything feels fresh. The problem lies in the perception of others that say, "You're thirty now, it's time to get your shit together." 

Whenever one of my peers outside of the punk scene finds out that I'm in a band, the first thing they ask me is how much money I make. When I tell them that we rarely break even, they then ask why I bother doing it at all. I usually follow up by asking them how much they make golfing with their buddies and what steps they're taking towards going pro. Something happens to people in their adult years causing them to lose their passions in life. I play music because I enjoy creating, being in different places, hanging out with friends and meeting new ones that share a similar outlook. The fact that I have to explain to people that those reasons are more important to me than money, is disappointing. 

When you're young you think of thirty as the time when the fun is over and you've got all your ducks in a row. But after talking to many of my peers, I've realized a lot of us don't want the fun to end and we still don't know what the hell we're doing. Is that so awful? 

Still, the mental fork in the road does wear me down. As a teenager and through my twenties I always wanted to do so many things with music and art but there was a lot of trial and error along the way. It seems that now, as I approach turning thirty, I finally have a clear vision of where I want to go with my creative endeavors and exactly how to make it happen. But then I hear all these outside voices......."It's never too late to go to college"..."When are you buying a house?"..."When are you having a baby?"..."Just put it on a credit card"..."Oh, you haven't gotten over the punk phase yet?"....And just as I'm about to tell the world to fuck off and leave me alone, that I'll do whatever I want, I realize that rent is due in four days and my car has a flat tire. 

Overall, I don't have a clue as to what a thirty year old is supposed to be doing, nor do I care. Maybe it's time I grew a mustache? I feel that there is no master schedule. No due date on life. But for some reason we, as a culture, put these expectations on ourselves "by the time we're thirty." The only given is death. We need to live our lives our own way, in whatever order we choose, and just except the fact that humans are a bunch of screw ups and that's OK. The serious stuff will always be there whether we want it to be or not. I'm more concerned with not forgetting what makes me happy even if what makes me happy may change as I get older. Sometimes I wonder how me as a kid would view myself today about to turn thirty. I'm guessing I wouldn't suck in my own eyes. That's good enough for me.  

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.  
---

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.

The Rocking 30's: David Meek

I don't remember the moment we met, but my first memory of Dave Meek is crashing on sleeping bags together in an empty office in Quebec City. That was 2001, and we were there with dozens of other Bard student activists to protest the dubious Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) meetings that turned the city into a walled off, feudal warzone. Since then, we have shared many other memories together, at Bard and beyond, and have been close friends for a full decade now. In 2005, I introduced him to another dear friend, Jo Weaver, and two years later I was a groomsman in their wedding. I continue to cherish my friendship with both of Dave and Jo. They will always feel close by, even if they are perpetually thousands of miles away.  

---

Having turned 30 going on two years ago now, it's interesting to reflect on what at the time seemed like an ominous and exciting milestone. I very distinctly remembered all the excitement and buildup surrounding the passing of that day (and its unsurprising but still a surprise “surprise party”). And all my friends joking that I was officially over the hill.....

At the time, married, in the midst of a Ph.d. program, with a house, dog and mortgage, I wondered whether they were right....(was I over the hill?) and then I decided, and still believe, that the late 20's/early 30's sure feel like I'm dab smack on top of the hill. And damn the view is good!

For me, this time has been one about perspective. Not so much a perspective focused on the immediate moment as perhaps those heady early 20s were, but about a longer perspective in which the present is very much valued, as the best time one has available to achieve one's dreams. To begin with, each of those previously mentioned things, which some might see as artifacts of dreaded Responsibility, including our most recent decision to have a baby while living in India, I see as choices made explicitly in the present with a longer perspective in mind (check out our blog for critical ruminations on the intersections of family life and academia). While each of those responsibilities might be shied away from, they've all had incredibly positive aspects, such as having a house has given me the opportunity to tear up the front yard and set up a massive urban garden.

From my perspective, those late 20's/early 30's have felt like a prolonged music jam session. Whether it is being semi-permanently nomadic, living in Brazil and now India as Jo and I conduct our Ph.d. research, or explore building community through urban gardening, it's been one exciting ride. Partially, these last few years have felt like an ongoing jam, because I made the decision that I was tired of wanting to learn to play music, and there was no time like the present to make good on that interest. Since going down the musical road, playing music has become an integral part of my daily life, and there is always three or four instruments within easy reach. All of those musings are to say, the top of the hill is great, but make sure you bring an instrument to provide your own theme song.