I turn 29 today.
And that makes me old.
Not really, in the grand scheme of things. But still, I like to think of it as me turning old.
While many people would say “age is only a number,” it’s nonetheless a number I have paid a lot of attention to over the years.
Throughout elementary school, I was the oldest in my grade. In high school, I was among the oldest in my grade; I think there were only two or three other people in my grade who shared my birthday or had theirs before mine.
In university is when I truly stopped caring all that much about the “honour” of being the oldest in my grade. Mainly because “grade” doesn’t really work in university, and I wasn’t the oldest anyway. In university, you share classes with people who went to college between high school and university, people who otherwise took time off before going to university, people who are returning to school after raising a family, and people who went straight to university.
So the age range is enormous and follows no pattern whatsoever.
Now, at this point in time, I don’t really care about being the oldest at something.
Instead, I look at my age in relation to what others have done at the same age — or younger, as the case may be.
That last point is the one point that really sticks with me.
There are a lot of things I haven’t done at my (relatively advanced) age.
I’m unmarried. Unattached, even.
No kids.
I don’t own a house.
I haven’t taken an international trip outside of the two high school band trips I took almost a decade ago.
To sum it up, I think I’ve lived quite the boring life. Especially in the 10 years since I finished high school.
Even so, maybe things aren’t as bad as I make them out to be. I mean, I am kind of living a dream of some sorts — I do live in another province now, having moved away in pursuit of work.
I do miss Toronto and everyone there, but at the same time things are going fairly well. I do mostly enjoy my life these days, the obvious and aforementioned holes notwithstanding. I am gradually building a social circle, centred on what has become an all-encompassing passion — ultimate.
So there is that, I suppose.
But it’s looking like my promise, made many years ago, will be kept, unless things change dramatically in the next 365 days — I’m jumping off a bridge if I’m not married by 30.
From YYZ to YEG 