All I ask on this most special of days is that you tell me what I have to look forward to in this coming decade. A sign passed to me lo just three nights past: a single ivory eyebrow hair arcing up past the others, stiff and proud.
My prediction: My the end of this decade I will be well into balding and have a considerably larger nose.
Happy birthday. Welcome to this side of the hill. I think it’s nice here.
Balding and bigger nose, yes. Also probably smarter, more successful, and possibly less of an asshole.
I know I am.
Happy birthday. Welcome to the best decade of your life.
Things you have to look forward to:
Less angst
More self-assurance
The wisdom that comes with life experience
Things that you have to fear:
Andy Rooney eyebrow hair
Ear hair
Gray hair
Really, if you can get over the hair, everything else is quite nice. Just invest in some sort of trimmer and you should be set.
Happy Birhtday! The thirties are better than the twenties in my opinion. Don’t let the hair issues get to you; I actually have a thing for bald men and think that many women do. My advice is to ignore anyone who tells you that you are too old for anything-I get that a lot. Enjoy:)
while my age prohibits me from offering you any enlightenment as to what you have to look forward to, i still thought it apropos to wish you a happy birthday anyway… so happy birthday dude. i’ve heard 30 is the new 20, so i’m sure things can only get better from here on in.
Just wait until the white nipple hairs start showing up.
Just be secure in the fact that you can now date anyone in the 19 to 39 years old range. And 18 year olds, if you’re willing to take on the stigma of “dirty old man”, which I am.
There’s this thing. It’s called the lower back. You probably haven’t heard from it too much.
But you will. Oh, you will.
You care less about what others think about your appearance. Clearly a step toward the grumpy old man phase.
hah! thirty was nothing. just wait until the first time you break a rib at the gym. oi.
btw, nice pandering for birthday wishes!
happy birthday!
having very recently reached 30, i’ve found very little difference when compared to 29. for example, i think coasting down the aisles on a shopping cart is terribly efficient. getting older just means more people i dont know will glare at me when i do that.
i say fuck those people
I’m bald, Joel. BALD.
I’m the oldest man on the Internet (I’m almost 40, my arthritis and eyesight will soon degrade to the point where I won’t be able to browse anymore, but the stories I could tell you about 14400 bps modems would make you shit your pants).
30s are all good, as mentioned above. But it ain’t all sunshine. Aches and pains settle in and stay. Good luck even getting an 18 yr old chick to recognize your existence, let alone talk to you in other than a retail setting. The chicks you date get friggin nuttier as the biological clock keeps ticking and Ticking and TICKing and TICKING and then you might end up marrying the nuttiest.
And you might get kids. Then you’ll really look back on your twenties and wonder how you wasted all that time. Seriously, I have three now and I look back on my twenties and think I must have spent 12 hours a day watching the tube with my dick in my hand. Realize if you go that route, you are no longer number 1. You are number 2 in the sense scatological.
Then, as you exit your 30s, you start spouting like a crazy man on the Internet like you have something to say that people actually want to listen to. Depressing. Good thing I haven’t fallen into that trap.
Luckily the ear hair gets so dense you can’t hear people laughing at you.
Balancing the baldness is the ear and nose hair which accelerate to the point that you would look like a yeti if you didn’t trim.
White pubes, there’s depressing.
Interestingly, every study that has tackled the problem has suggested that getting older means getting happier: people consistently rank the past decade as their best. Ask an 80-year-old when their best years, and they’ll say it’s their 70’s. A 40-year-old will say his 30’s. The best truly is to come.
Also, more access to cougars and MILFs, which can only be a good thing.
By the end of this decade you will be able to gaze at pretty young things for as long as you wish, because you will have become invisible to them. You will find you have more interest in the more mature woman, which is just as well because they are the only ones who will give you the time of day.
Now that I’m closing in on 40 with 2.4ish years left in the 30’s, I gotta say how nice it has been to wave buhbye to so much of the bullshit I used to think was important. it isn’t so much that your values change as it is that they come more into focus. I feel like I was misinterpreting what I used to perceive was worth being mindful of.
Also, sex gets better. No longer can you piss the paint off of a fencepost, and you don’t really want to nail everything that moves anymore, but the times you really want to have sex you’re way better at it, and you last longer. Of course, erectile dysfunction also becomes an increasing possibility. Quit smoking now to fight that potential. I really should. (Of course, there’s always Cialis.)
That tub of fat you managed to lose from your midsection? Excellent decision. It only gets harder to keep off as you progress through your 30’s. Staying fit benefits you in all kinds of ways.
Whatever neuroses you managed to not deal with in your 20’s are good to address in this decade. Deal with them or they’ll be with you for life.
Best part about turning 30 - becoming cool with the fact that it ain’t about you. Weird thing about that is recognizing that it never was.
You may find that your appetite for destroying yourself through drugs and drink diminishes radically. Like, you want to do it less often, and to a lesser extent when you do it. However, every once in a while you will still have to throw down like a 20-something just to see if you still can, and indeed, you sure can! but you don’t bounce back from that kind of self abuse like you used to. Takes about twice as long now.
Finally, you start building a new kind of relationship with your parents. Surely this is reflexive upon the nature of the established rapport thus far, but what I’ve found is an awful lot of forgiveness on my part for their shortcomings, recognizing that everyone’s human. You might find that they need you in an emotional way a lot more now, and that, buddy, is only going to get more intense from this point forward.
You will wind up giving people better presents.
You will revisit shit from your 20’s, like music and other media, and find many of the things you used to really enjoy lacking in actual substance, and it will be a little depressing.
You will look at pictures of yourself from your teens and be really embarrassed; you will look at pictures of yourself in your 20’s and be only marginally less embarrassed. And you will wonder whatever happened to that shirt you used to love, etc.
That’s really the only difference. Everyone’s lying about those aches and pains. Any little twinge of pain or physical difficulty they mentioned here is just these dicks fucking with you. Nothing like that actually happens.
From one Joel to another - I can tell you this. Your thirties will be all about doing those things you know that if you don’t do them “now” - you’ll never do them. As soon as the clock struck 12:01 on my 30th I knew that the next 3-5 years were going to be full of some shenanigans and some risks being taken. Skydiving. Traveling. Quitting my job and starting my own business (check).
And that gray hair? It’s a badge of honor.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY! May you get all the Porter farts you can handle! Hope it was great. Much love from the other coast.
KP