Interview with a Thirty Year Old

30 y/o me: Earlier today, I was listening to Bo Burnham’s song 30. He’s comparing himself to his grandfather and thinking he hasn’t accomplished anything, and of course the irony is all of us artists and wannabe artists are comparing ourselves to Bo Burnham. It’s like no matter who you are, you can find someone who is where you think you want to be or has that thing you think you want.

60 y/o me: And meanwhile, someone else is thinking that about you.

30 y/o me: Exactly. And no one’s happy. 

60 y/o me: What are you most grateful for looking back on thirty years?

30 y/o me: Whenever you try to condense it down to that size, it’s usually something like, I mean as cliche as it sounds, love. How much love can we get? How much love can we give? The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return. You know? I grew up in a loving family, had a tight knit community in Indiana, found another one in New York City. I’ve just been really lucky, I think, to have so much love in my life. 

I’m grateful for all the incredible art I’ve been able to digest. You think about how much access I have to music and movies, art museums, concerts, plays. Historically and geographically, I have this unprecedented privilege. Whether it’s money, or health, or my dashing good looks, or just the time I’ve had here, I have so much going for me that most people have never had. I always see the negatives, the things I don’t have. Like I’m not rich or famous or in a relationship or whatever. But I am just so incredibly, mind-bogglingly blessed with a life that the vast majority of people have never had a chance at living.

60 y/o me: Does that make you feel grateful or guilty?

30 y/o me: [laughs] Both, for sure. I feel like I should be more grateful than I am. But it’s hard to be grateful for what you have when there’s always so much you don’t have. And I don’t mean material things. But whatever it is – achievement, success. Gotta do more, gotta be more. The eyes of man are never satisfied. 

60 y/o me: If you had a chance to redo these thirty years, what would you do differently?

30 y/o me: I wish we had two lives: one to learn everything and the other one to live with all that we learned. But in linear time you’re always learning things with progressively less time in which to implement them. And of course the decisions you make at the beginning when you know the least are the ones that have the greatest impact on your trajectory. 

So with what I know now… well, first of all, I wish I had gotten into recovery sooner. Let’s start there. But otherwise… if you go all the way back, like, I don’t regret my childhood at all. It was so idyllic. I mean, I was full of rage the entire time, but that’s me–

60 y/o me: That’s how it was always going to be.

30 y/o me: Hundred percent. My adolescence, I think, is where I start to wish things were different. When I was nineteen to twenty-four, I can not for the life of me tell you what I was doing in that timeframe. And not for the reason most people that age have because they were out partying and fooling around. At least that’s life experience. I was living with my parents, I didn’t have a job, I wasn’t studying a craft. I was waiting for life to happen to me and it never did. So my actual coming of age was pretty late. I wish I had figured out who I was sooner and had more time to just live that out. Instead of being this over-serious, intellectually top-heavy twenty year old trying to figure everything out and meanwhile not doing anything. 

60 y/o me: Being sixteen and burning up a Bible.

30 y/o me: [laughs] Exactly. That is the soundtrack of my adolescence. “The wasted years, the wasted youth.” And maybe everyone feels that. Maybe adolescence is inherently inefficient. But I feel like I could have had this Norman Rockwellian, young love thing. Working as a soda jerk, taking a girl to the movies. No pressure, no rush, but I would be learning about myself and other people and how we relate to each other – what it means to be human – just by living, you know? Instead, I learned everything from books and movies alone in my room.

I wish I had picked one thing and dedicated myself to getting great at it. Instead of dabbling in all these different things, starting projects and abandoning them for the next shiny object as soon as they felt like work. I took these absurd long shots so I would fail fast and convince myself I tried, when really I was just cutting corners. I was impatient because I always felt like I was running out of time. And I still feel that, but I’ve learned to do things right, do it by the book. I just wish I had started that sooner. 

Bono said that about U2. What if we were the rock band that did it right? How far can you go, what can you do if you don’t self-destruct? Whatever it is. If it’s writing, what if Hemingway had put the shotgun down and said, “I’m going to write one more. The very best I can with everything I’ve picked up and carried with me all these years.” And maybe it’s not as good as in his prime, but it’s different. He’s able to write things now that he couldn’t then. Dylan said that. If he had, the world would be bigger and better for it. And what if we all did that? Why is Enoch the only one who got that close to God? What if someone prayed, and read the Word, and walked with God, and gave their life for that? How close could you get to touching the face of God? And what if that person is me? How close can I get? 

You do things right, the way they should be done, and there’s no guarantee it’ll work out, but either way, you know you did your part, you took your best shot. And that’s all you can ever do. I feel bad because I see how many shots I miss. I want to make every shot, always win and never lose. But it’s not about that. It’s just saying, “This is me; God gave me five talents. And maybe He gave someone else ten and someone else one, but He gave me five and what am I going to do with them?” Like Lana Del Rey said, to stand before God and say, “I used everything you gave me.” I forgot the question.

60 y/o me: Things you wish you had done differently.

30 y/o me: Right, so that’s like my teens and early twenties. I wish I had started down that path sooner. I don’t know. I wish I had travelled more. Gotten out of the country. Do we ever get out of the country?

60 y/o me: You’ll have to wait and see.

30 y/o me: That sounds ominous. I don’t know, I guess all of this is looking at time from a pretty Western, capitalist perspective. Like as a resource, which is such a weird way to think about time. Alan Watts would have something to say about that.

60 y/o me: So would I. When you were younger and thirty was a speck on the horizon, what did you hope would happen in those thirty years?

30 y/o me: Well, it depends on the age. Seven years old, I wanted to travel the country, totally free. No job; just me, a six shooter and a Shetland pony.

60 y/o me: I remember that.

30 y/o me: Then we get to about fourteen years old and I’m hoping to join the 27 club. Dark, mysterious, genius artist type. I didn’t even want to make it to thirty. So neither of those happened.

60 y/o me: How do you feel about it now?

30 y/o me: A friend of ours told me she thought I spent my twenties well. Which is crazy to me, because I feel like I was so inefficient. There is so much I haven’t accomplished; I’m not rich, or famous, or in a relationship, or have a body of work to show for it. But I love that compassion, that empathy she has to say, as a human with what you had and didn’t have at the time, you did this well. 

60 y/o me: Well done, good and faithful servant.

30 y/o me: Exactly. And if that’s God, Himself, saying that, maybe I can have more compassion on me, too. I think I have a lot of compassion on my younger selves, because I know what I had to work with and I was doing the best I could, even if it wasn’t very good. But I’ve always been a lot harder on my present self. 

60 y/o me: What are you hoping for with the next thirty years?

30 y/o me: Well, to be honest, I suppose for the moment, it would be just great if I could get a girlfriend. 

60 y/o me: Wow. Massive.

30 y/o me: [laughs] That’s such a good movie. I was thinking about this last night. Like I said, I have so much going for me and I’m really close. Life as a work of art. Like I’m right there, and maybe I’m already there. But I just wish there was someone I could share it with. Ride or die. Uncomplicated. Someone to hold and love and who loves me. 

I still have this ambition to create something really great. To give the last ounce of everything I have to offer. I hope I can. That I have enough time and health and hunger to do that. That I make something really special, and it touches people, and becomes a part of the symphony. 

Other than that, I don’t know. Brian Setzer has this song where he says, “You only get sixty years on the planet, and if you get any more, you might wish that you hadn’t.” So, I’m still like that fourteen year old kid who’s hoping to be dead by then. No offense.

60 y/o me: [laughs] None taken. Thank you for your time.

30 y/o me: Thank you.

J. 

Dec. 21, 2024