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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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.