Thursday, May 05, 2005

A Pirate Looks At Thirty, Part Two

While walking the pooch last night, I walked past some wet cement just outside the fence that surrounds the havily fortified Ilk Compound. In one last desperate attempt to cling to my rapidly fading youth, I picked up a stick and scribbled my initials in it.

Got home from the office today, walked the pooch again. Cement's still there. My initials were gone. Boo hoo, sniff sniff.

I was out on the deck talking over the rail to Neighbor Girl on Sunday afternoon about hitting the big 3-0. Neighbor Girl is a leggy, willowy 32 year old who is a ton of fun to talk to, even though for some reason I get grade-school-crush nervous whenever I see her and it totally shows up when I talk to her.

NG tells me that my 30s are going to be the best years of my life, because I'll "finally be secure in who I am." In a way, that kinda scares me. I've spent the past 12 years doing a ton of soul-searching, and gone through more metamorphoses than the dude in Invisible Man. I've been a shy and insecure geek, a cocky young Turk strutting around the trading floor with a lot of people wanting to kick my ass, a sensitive wanna-be Romeo, a bartender who lent a sympathetic ear to the denizens of Lincoln Park, and now I guess I'm just a typical Yuppie with a taste for loud shirts and nice shoes who has a bizarre affinity for poker and baseball. Am I secure in that? Not really. Am I going to re-invent myself? Probably not. Am I sure of who I am? Hell no.