I’m 30

Wednesday 16 June 2010This is more than 14 years old. Be careful.

Today’s my birthday, I’m now 30. Well, 0x30, that is, 48.

Aging, whether it be biological or psychological, seems to be about two things: accretion and flexibility. The older we get, the more we have: experiences, skills, opinions, debts, possessions, and on and on. Some are positive, and some are negative. The trick is to find ways to keep the good and shed the bad, to use your accumulated stuff to make you happier and more able.

Flexibility seems to be a big part of it. Some things you carry along with you help you react well to new situations: you have experience to draw on, you have people who can help you. Some can prevent you from adapting: old habits, strongly held beliefs that no longer hold. People have a natural tendency to try to replicate past successes, to cling to what has worked. You can try to stay inside your comfort zone, but it may keep you from finding new successes. Your comfort zone can shrink over time to box you into a very narrow set of choices.

So stay nimble, keep the good, junk the bad, learn new things, shift from your center.

Or maybe another year isn’t to be taken too seriously:

» 7 reactions

Comments

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hey Ned. wise words! and congrats :)
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Happy Birthday! Today is my birthday too, except I seem to have been born 3 years after you. :)
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Ned, on your birthday you are only a day older that you were the day before. The actual number doesn't have a lot of significance (and I speak as someone who turns 0x3C next Sunday, the day after I get back from Tokyo).

I find as I grow older I am less concerned with creating the right impression and more bothered about actually doing the right thing.
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I turned 0x2A on the 16th, and those sound like words to live by. Happy birthday. As for your last sentence and Steve's first: I'd prefer to rephrase it as "birthdays are no more or less important than any other lived day, which is to say very important indeed."

http://kk.org/ct2/2007/09/my-life-countdown-1.php
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Поздравляю!
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Evan Scheessele 1:41 AM on 19 Jun 2010
Nice. Happy B-Day. The TMBG song - Erin insists on that one as an official happy-birthday song. Neat video.

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