90s (baby) anxiety
"sorry i'm running a few min behind!"
I feel like every time I talk to real adults, we get into the perennial debate on what it means be “young” or “old”. I only have a vague inclination of who pearl jam is, my boss has never heard of frank ocean.
I’m starting to like sf because I’m consistently told how young I am. In new york, I’ll walk around the east village and feel absolutely decrepit amongst the nyu girls in thrifted skirts over jeans traipsing around with a thousand chrome colored hair clips. But then I’ll spend a sunday in cobble hill and feel out of place amongst the alo yoga moms and young dads with moustaches pushing strollers.
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I missed my flight over to sf. I can picture the delta check in systems shutting off exactly 45 minutes before the departure time where at that point no amount of pleading, crying or anger can change its execution — it’s 0 or 1. You’re either on time or late.
I feel like so much of my life I’m fighting time. Running into the 7am solidcore class at 6.59am, on the F train at 8.03pm for an 8pm dinner. There are some things that you can’t be late to, usually the admin things, appointments, things that have clear agreed upon time and places.
But as I’ve gotten older I’ve started to feel the pressures of time running out in “life” milestones that don’t have clear departure times. At what point am I supposed to stop partying and settle down? At what age do I age out of being able to move to paris?
I have this creeping fear that at some point everyone around me will collectively decide to achieve a milestone by a certain age while I frit my life away on completely frivolous endeavors. And once I get my shit together and run up to the gate, I’ll already know what the agent on the other side will be saying.
My boss thinks I’m lame for freaking out about getting older. My wife and I still go out and party he says. My other colleague shows me a photo of himself eating pizza at 4am after a night out.
But it’s easy to say these things when you’re 40 years old, at the peak of your career, when you’ve found your person, have a second house in Colorado — it’s unfair selection bias I argue, because I’m still (relatively) young and (really) confused.
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Yesterday I opened mobile Safari on my phone to test out some blog features and it wasn’t until I started scrolling through the tabs that I realized that I had unearthed a time capsule 3 years into the past. A page for restaurant closings in 2020, a job posting, a sweatsuit set from entireworld (rip), some williamsburg Streeteasy listings. I feel like the exact same person I was 3 years ago when I had searched those things but my life is also completely different.
At that time, I had just returned to my family home in ohio after spending a year and a half living, working and surfing in sydney. I was itching to move back to new york but had no idea what that life looked like. I remember being very genuinely anxious about what it meant to live in new york city again, about the isolation of city life and wondering who my friends would be there. The city is extremely unforgiving when you feel like you’re going into it alone.
So much can change in a year. So much can change in 3. And yet no one talks about how you still feel like the same person you used to be. I still get anxious and sad and insecure in the same way I used to when I was 24, when I was 17.
While I was living in my childhood bedroom I found one of the journals I kept in middle school. I had written out a timeline for my life starting from what color dresses I’d wear each year of homecoming and prom to what age I’d get married and have my second kid.
In college I did a variation of the same exercise: I’d stay in new york for 2 years after graduating and then I’d move to SF to have picnics in the park while working a cushy tech job.
Letting a 20 year plan my life now is as silly as letting 13 year old me plan my life. And someday I’ll look back and feel like 28 year old me needed to put the pen down and fcking relax.
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A few months back, one of my slightly older and much wiser friends posted an insta story with the idea that time is our friend. As young people, we have a tendency to think time is our enemy, marching forward, unforgivingly, as we try to fight against it. She likened it to surfing, where the beginner mistake is to try to fight the ocean, an exhausting and fruitless endeavor.
When I was learning to surf in Bondi, I remember sitting on my board looking out into the horizon waiting for ages for a wave to come. At the first sign of a swell I’d start paddling forward, regardless of the speed or size of the wave because I felt ready to ride it. Sometimes by the time the wave got to me it’d be a massive swell and I’d nose dive. Other times the wave would completely dissipate into the ocean before it even touched the end of my board.
The thing about surfing is that most of the time is not spent riding a wave but on the “in between moments”. Time sitting on the board, waiting or time between when you see the wave coming in the distance and before popping up to your feet. You have to be flexible, patient — the ocean will move how it wants to move, and you have to be willing to speed up to catch the wave or understand when to let it go. I’m trying to remind myself that most of life is spent sitting on the board, squinting out into the horizon: tired, hopeful, waiting.
hey tina, love your writing. just a question, do you use some lowercase words on purpose?