Does Time Make a Difference?

The Slow march to death... In a cup!

Oh yeah.  I'm 31 now.  Neat, huh?  Funny how that numbers keeps changing yet I stay the same.  I am a more defined, more concentrated, more dense version of who I have always been.  A lot of the Personality Baby Fat has melted away over the years, there is still a ways to go, but I often feel a bit of anxiety about this whole getting older thing.  The mythology of maturity is constantly being tested and proved to be false.

Yes, this is a recent picture.
Yes, this is my friend and I sitting in costumes watching "The Road to El Dorado." 

I think it was in the movie "The Sandlot" where a character said once you turned twelve, you stopped believing in the monsters under your bed and that mental space was replaced with thoughts of the opposite sex.  I remember being seven or so and going, "oh, thank God.  I'll stop being afraid of ghosts and gremlins when I am 12 and start being boy crazy.  Okay.  A few years of this nonsense to go."

No, seriously.  I think I said that word-for-word aloud one night after the Speak-and-Spell went off randomly in my closet one night with dying batteries.  Scariest sound you can imagine.  I was an awesome kid.  My parents were damned lucky.

Birthday weekend hike!

And so, I thought the husband and the kids and the pet of some sort would just happen.  I thought growing older meant my handwriting would naturally become more elegant, and I would assemble a team of respectable adult friends who I meet with every now and then and do respectable adult things with.  Of all the cool shit I have done and will do, I think one of my biggest regrets when I die is that I will never get to attend a dinner party like I assumed all adults had when I was a kid.  You know, where you and your S.O.  dress nice, bring a bottle of wine, sit at the table and discuss politics and science and religion.  I think... Does that happen in reality?  I have been waiting for an invitation to one of these events for about 25 years now.

Waiting for that invite.... Keeping the phone line open.

Snow.  In November.

So, what does happen if not Becoming a Responsible and Respectable adult?  This time last year... I was in Vegas.  I had been home for about two weeks following my Turkey-Scandanavia-U.K. trip.  In about a week, this time last year, I was off to Spain.  Hadn't really started job hunting yet.  This time last year I had no thoughts of China but I knew I wanted to go somewhere.  A year before that, I was heading to Tokyo to work.  The year before that, I was in Numazu.  The year before that, I thought I was settling into my career and my purchased home with my sofa and car and bedroom set... If I could talk to myself in the past Mary of December 2010 would be fun.  "Hey, hey.  Don't, uh, don't waste money on stuff.  Big surprise coming your way in April."  And now, I am sitting in my FREEZING apartment in Beijing, loose plans to meet up with Rachel and Kim downtown being thrown about.  Got my five-week winter holiday plans pretty much sketched out (more on that as the dates get closer).  I have ideas of places I'd like to go and things I'd like to write about, but if there is one constant over the years, it's that my nice and neat plans rarely a)happen like I thought they would and b)are rarely what I wanted anyway, truth be told, let's just let that great mix of planning and spontaneity serve me like it always has.