Earlier this year, I turned 30-years-old and it really didn’t start to make me think about the impact until about a month into it. I could look back at my 20-year-old self and see how absolutely stupid I was. I can even look back to when I was 25 and I think I was even stupider by the sheer amount of bad decisions I had made. I sometimes would convince myself that I could transfer my consciousness back in time to have the knowledge and forethought to say, “No, don’t date her, don’t smoke that, don’t drink that, don’t hang out with that person, cut those people off….” Since that is not a possibility, writing about what I learned and will learn as I head toward the next milestone of 40 might give me the ability to learn from mistakes, and to prevent future mistakes.
ALCOHOL AND DRUGS LOSE THEIR APPEAL
Remember when you were underage, and drinking alcohol was the coolest thing you could do? “Adam is having a kegger, we’re gonna get so wasted!” This mindset stays ramped up throughout high school and college. Hangovers last for about 30 minute. You then pound a Gatorade, and you’re ready to go to a champagne breakfast at 8am before pre-gaming at tailgate.
Soon, you turn 21, and you can now legally drink! Time to hit the clubs and the bar scenes without a fake! (I live near the border of Windsor, Canada, so we just went over there to party when we were 19). It’s fun for a while, but over the course of a few years, it gets tiring. Your main objective was to probably pick up a girl or guy to take home, wake up and not remember, feel awkward, and then do it all over again the next weekend. As you progress through your 20’s, the less and less you want to do these types of things. It’s not that you don’t want to, it’s that you have more responsibilities after college. Going out and drinking on a Friday is fine, but you might have to work Saturday morning, so you can’t tie one on, or even get a buzz.
Now you have a girlfriend, so the objective of going out, getting wasted and trying to hook up will disappear and turn into a quiet night watching Netflix and drinking wine. Why go out and waste money when you can hang out with her at home and have a better night? If you happen to be married with a kid in your 20’s, well, going out with friends becomes a miracle weekend, and having a night to yourself and your significant other can become just as rare.
What about drugs? Yeah, those lose their appeal as you get older. I can remember going to raves and there were so many drugs being passed around for free. You got even more drugs if you used the excuse “I can’t tonight, I’m being responsible.” For some reason, this made people want to give you all the drugs since you seem like a narc.
Being young and thinking I was invincible made me think I could handle anything (no needles, or heroin, or insane crap, though). As I got into my late 20’s, there was no reason to do coke and drink at the same time, or do coke at all. All that does it make you wired and unaware of how drunk you get. Popping a molly meant possibly hooking up with randoms because it erases your inhibitions and can lead to some big mistakes. Taking drugs with strangers when you go to a rave alone is generally a big mistake.
As you reach 30, the want to go out and party goes down. Even if you’re single, it will go down because all your friends are starting to “settle” down. Trust me, there is nothing worse than being the single guy with no kids sitting at a dinner party where someone is discussing the zoning laws of building a pool, and then turning your head to hear others discussing a couples vacation. (*points finger gun at head*)
YOU’RE ON YOUR OWN
You have family and friends, sure, but as you age, you begin to realize that it’s you that has to make the decisions that decide your life. Every single decision that you make in your life has consequences that are either good or bad. Even if you do every single thing right, you can still end up paying for it. The best laid plans can always end in disaster, which is why you should always have that thought in the back of your mind when you do just about everything, no matter how miniscule you think it is.
Did someone remind you to get milk on a Sunday during the game? You only had 3 beers, so you just run up to the corner that’s only about 5 blocks from your house. Boom. Pulled over, and your life is screwed with for months. One tiny problem could end up costing you. As years pass, you have to bail yourself out of these situations as they happen, or have the intelligence to nip them in the bud before they throw a wrench into your plans.
FINANCES
Money is sadly something that we all have to deal with. They say “money doesn’t buy happiness!” Yeah, but it does buy you a place to live, food and water. If you don’t have money, you don’t have a stable environment to achieve any happiness. As I get older, I recognize that I need to save money instead of blowing it on crap that I probably won’t use. For example: Many people I know still play video games. I slowly got out of playing them in my mid-20’s so I stopped buying the newest systems or getting new computers that could handle the new games graphics… until I bowed to peer pressure. I bought a Wii, and played it 3 times before trading it on Craigslist for an Xbox 360. I played that maybe 10 times and only used it to stream movies and tv off my network. I sold that and for some idiotic reason, I bought ANOTHER Xbox 360 only to do the same thing. Each time I realized that it was a waste of money, but did it anyway. Right now, my friends want me to buy an Xbox One. Sure, it would be lovely to have one, but I will eventually just use it to watch Netflix. Buying all the junk you need to play a game now is basically a scam. I can use all that money to make sure my car is working fine, pay my phone and gym bill, or save up for something worthwhile like a vacation to somewhere I haven’t been.
What you don’t realize when you’re younger is that money is just used for booze, food, nights out, games, electronics, and other crap. As you gain more and more responsibilities, you have to be wise with how you use your money. You have to have a rainy day fund if something bad happens. You have to save for your future. You have to budget yourself so you have enough money to cover all your expenses. If you make $3,000 a month, have $1,000 in rent, $400 for food, $300 for utilities, $100 for your phone, $150 for cable/internet, that leaves a little over $1,000. Oh, right, I forgot: gas money, taking care of your home, going on a date, etc… Everything should be budgeted. If you have a smoking habit and smoke a pack a day? It’s like $7 for a pack. That’s $210 a month, buddy.
The older you get, the smarter you need to get when handling your money. You don’t have your parents to take care of all anymore. You totally took for granted when you were younger, but now as you age, you realize the cost of things. This really makes you think about what your parents had to do when you were growing up. When I was younger, we were pretty poor, but they spoiled us on Christmas morning with expensive stuff. As I grew up, I realized what a spoiled piece of sh*t I was. Even now, my Mother wants to spoil me on Christmas and I refuse. It’s funny that when you’re a kid, the last thing you want is socks, but if I get socks, I will be excited for new socks since they have a use. Mostly, I have grown to hate getting gifts. Use your money on yourself! Pay a bill, buy yourself some shoes, or save it! You earned it. Also, don’t buy your kids Christmas gifts until they’re 5. They won’t remember it, anyway. A baby can’t read some ironic baby shirt quote they’re wearing.
TRUST YOURSELF AND YOUR GUT
It’s cliche, but when your Mom yells at you after making a mistake, she’ll say, “If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you jump off?!” It’s silly, but it’s totally on point. You can use it as a historical example: I’m sure everyone watching Hitler lose his mind on stage at every rally had the thought in the back of their head, “Hmm, this guy is pretty crazy…wait, everyone is raising their hands and saluting, crap, guess I have to.” It seemed like a bad decision at the time, but everybody did it and we all know how that ended up.
If something is a bad idea, just don’t go along with it because everyone else is… even if it alienates you (if it’s Nazi stuff, leave the country). I talked about Xbox earlier, and everyone getting one and telling me to… Because of this, every few weeks I go onto Amazon and check prices for systems before my gut tells me to stop. You just have to remember the end result in buy crap you don’t need.
If something inside is telling you not to do something because it’s bad, or to do something because it’s good and no one believes in you, trust yourself and your morals to make the right decision. If you didn’t like something, be honest and say you didn’t. If you like something and everyone is hating on you, who cares? Being yourself and being honest is a hell of a lot better than being a liar that tries to appease everyone. The more you do that, the more you’re just another face in the crowd. Everyone made fun of Waldo’s stupid outfit, yet he’s the only one you care about in the pictures. I recognize that was a silly example.
HEALTH BECOMES MORE IMPORTANT
Health is always important, but as you escape your 20’s and transition into your 30’s and 40’s, it becomes even clearer about how important it is. Remember all that alcohol and drugs talk up above? That crap won’t fly as you get older. When you get out of shape now, it’s a lot of work to get back into shape. If you smoke, drink, eat hot dogs, and don’t get exercise, you might as well be slowly killing yourself.
I smoked for about 10 years, and quitting was probably the hardest thing I ever did, but it was the best thing I ever did. Smoking takes over your life, and when you quit, you have to relearn how to live a life where smoking is not a part of it. I could hold my breath for 3 minutes when I was younger, but when I tried holding my breath when I smoked, it was barely 45 seconds. Now imagine going on a snowboarding trip where the air is thinner in the mountains. It was a nightmare just to try to breathe. Since quitting, I got my lung capacity back, and my dampened senses of smell and taste have all returned to normal
The sooner you cut out the bad habits early and stay in shape as you age, the better you will feel and the more you’ll notice your body appreciating it. We’ve all met the 30 or 40-something who looked like he was a World War II veteran. Bad habits age you and kill you faster.
KEEP A CORE GROUP OF FRIENDS
If you go on Facebook and see someone who has over 2,000 friends, they’re either a celebrity or someone who’s very sad and in denial. When you have hundreds of acquaintances and no real close friends, you limit yourself to the loneliness of not having a true connection that close friends have. If your best friend since grade school comes up to you with a problem, seeking advice, you will help as best you can, and vice versa. If that guy you hung out with a few times at a poker game is the ear of advice you’re looking for, don’t expect him to be much help since he barely knows you and probably wouldn’t give you his full attention.
As you get older, you start to cut off the toxic and useless people who you didn’t realize were toxic to your life. You slowly weed out the backstabbers, the liars, the fakes, the phonies, the leeches, the sh*t talkers, the addicts, and the ones that you truly didn’t like, but thought you had to be their friends forever ever since you’ve known them so long. Let’s face it, some people are just awful. I know full well that I’m an asshole, but I will help out a friend in just about every scenario if they need help. That’s when my sarcasm fades. (Ed Note: If you blindly ask me what I’m doing Sunday, and it’s not football season, I’ll say I’m busy. Don’t trick me into helping you move or paint something, Brandon).
BE A GOOD PARENT
As a kid, everyone goes through that rebellious phase where they hate their parents because their parents don’t understand their “pain.” But even at their most rebellious, they still know that you, as a parent, are all they have in the world. Yep, those kids are all you have in the world, too. You are their go to person for everything imaginable. You can lose your significant other by break-up or death, but they’re always replaceable no matter how awful it feels, but your kids can’t replace you. This ties into being on your own. You still are, but your kids depend on you as a moral lighthouse to point them in the direction of what is good and what is right. Don’t make stupid mistakes that could hurt you, but devastate them. It’s your obligation being a parent to make sure of that.
It’s sad, but people who had kids in their late teens and early 20’s always seem to have the most trouble actually dealing with their kids. Don’t decide to have children until you’re mentally mature enough and ready to do so. The moment you have children when you can barely take care of yourself is when a bad situation just turned into a hellstorm that you can’t get away from (unless you’re a really bad person, then you can just runaway). You went from barely taking care of yourself to having a life that depends on you. Having a child is a big deal. It’s one of the biggest decisions of your life, so make sure you can handle it and can support them. If you still happen to be with the person you had the child with, I hope they’re equally up to the task, which brings me to…
DON’T SETTLE BECAUSE YOU THINK YOU HAVE TO
If you hit a certain point in your 30’s or 40’s and you notice that everyone you know is settling down and having kids, don’t do so just because everyone else is. I won’t name names, but I’ve met a few people who got married and actually admitted they settled on a certain partner because they’ve been together a certain amount of time, their friends get along with each other, and they might as well just get married. If that isn’t the most depressing thing I have ever heard, I don’t know what is.
I can recall past relationships where I was blinded by love and thought “This is the one!” even though when the blood rushed back to my head, I thought, “You have to end this, she’s awful.” Years down the line, I couldn’t even imagine being with any of them. Once you get married to someone you settle for, you can still get out of it with financial consequences. If you get married and have a kid to someone you settled with, well, now you’re in it, friend.
Don’t settle on someone you’ve been dating for a year while the loads of doubts pile up in your head. The more and more you get intertwine your lives, the harder it becomes to break free. Look 10 years into the future, can you really see still being with this person? If it’s not 90-100%, you may have some decisions to make. If you have to keep yourself from cheating, you may be with the wrong person.
I know some people who met in grade school, and they stayed together because they found that perfect person, had awesome kids, and look like the perfect family — even if that sounds like the opening lines of a Dateline mystery killing. Then I see others get married, look slightly sad, have an uncontrollable kid, and it makes you feel bad for them and what may happen in their future — again, Dateline. For example: There’s a family in my neighborhood that had 2 kids already, then had triplets. To make it worse, the guy found out his wife was pregnant with 3 on the same day that his basement flooded and destroyed his mancave. Now, he mows the lawn looking like he’s a Xanax bottle away from ending it all. His face is the face of having settled on a life he didn’t really want, but is now stuck in.
In this feature, I did my best to try to tie these topics together to point out that these are the things you learn as you get older: Use your 20’s to figure out who you want to be, your 30’s developing and bettering that person, and your 40’s to live the life you set up. We’re not the same people we were 10 years ago, and we’re not the same person we’re going to be in the next 10-20 years, but making the best decisions available to us will hopefully assure that whomever we are, we’re good people.
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Jeff Sorensen is an author, writer and occasional comedian living in Detroit, Michigan. You can look for more of his work on The Huffington Post, UPROXX, BGR and by just looking up his name.
Contact: jeff@socialunderground.com
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