I turned thirty last Wednesday. This in and of itself is neither impressive nor memorable.. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people had a birthday on September 16th. Hell, I know some of them. A bunch of those people turned thirty too I bet. Probably some other person named Dylan also turned thirty. In 1990, parents really loved naming their kids Dylan. Because of the TV show 90210. My parents say they didn’t name me after that show, but who can ever really know. I’ll keep telling people that my parents named me after the poet Dylan Thomas and not after a character on a primetime soap opera.
Not many things cooler than being born at the beginning of a decade. For example, it’s pretty easy to remember how old I am. I just have to know what year it is and add ten or nine to that, depending on the month. I get to claim the moniker of “90s kid,” even though I don’t remember the majority of that decade. Every turn of the decade feels just a little more special to me because I enter a new one of my own as well. The census happens whenever I reach another milestone. Every twenty years a presidential election occurs near a significant birthday. All meaningless little things that when put together make me feel one iota cooler.
The marking of decades comes from our obsession with the base-10 number system. Scientists fucking love base-ten. They use it to measure all sorts of shit. Weight, length, speed. The metric system is base-ten. We count in base-ten. That is the only reason why decades and centuries seem so important. If we had used a base-five or base-thirty-six number system decades would not seem any more special then turning thirty-two.
That said, culture informs our way of live in one way or another, so this birthday did feel big for me. Despite the pandemic and the United States falling apart at the seams, I still managed to have a pretty sweet time. A few friends came over and hung out in the backyard. My girlfriend made me a wonderful fried chicken dinner. I got some cool gifts from friends and family. Said friends and family got together and made me a wonderful collection of (almost) thirty different recipes and a few gift cards to get the ingredients for them. It was an incredibly sweet and thoughtful gift. My girlfriend pushed past her visceral distaste for seafood and got me a gift certificate to a nice seafood store so I could fulfill all my aqueous gustatory needs. My parents got me a tie that looks like a Bosch painting. Right up my alley. I got a pair of the best socks in the world from my brother and his girlfriend. It was wonderful to feel so loved. I will eat like a king for these next few weeks.
I shouldn’t just list all the gifts I got for the rest of the essay. That’s rude, and quite frankly boring for most people. So I’ll stop. Here’s anoter picture of little me.
I didn’t know what thirty looked like for me. I’ve been lucky and privileged enough to not have to worry about making it to thirty, but I didn’t have any sort of vision of the future for that part of my life. I’ve never really been a long-term planner. If you had asked me even five years ago about what I thought I’d be doing in 2020 I would have looked at you blankly and said, “I don’t know, probably what I’m doing now.” Five years ago I was single, living with two roommates who I didn’t really know, working at a market research company, doing too much improv, and listening to a lot of Run The Jewels. I certainly didn’t see myself owning a dog, living with my wonderful girlfriend, and listening to a lot of Jeff Rosenstock. I’m glad the past me missed the mark, but my fortune-telling business isn’t going to do as well as I though it would.
I don’t know what the next thirty years or even the next ten will hold. Hopefully I’ll graduate from UIC in a couple of years and get a tenure-track job teaching history (lol). But who knows? It’s hard enough thinking about that far in the future. Who knows if tenure will even exist in four years? Or if we’ll have a hospitable planet in ten.
I know, I know, it’s a little cringe to cry apocalypse while we still have the ability to save ourselves. Countless peoples and groups throughout history have seen the end coming around every conceivable corner and, for the most part, they got it wrong. Living during an international pandemic and seeing governmental rot froth to the surface has made me a lot more understanding of those boys who cried apocalypse however. The environment collapsing around our heads too has added a lot of weight to those calls.
Before I veer too far into maudlin doom, I should stop. Staring into the abyss while it stares back into you only gets you so far. There are wonderful people and organizations fighting incredible fights. The socialist left, and the DSA in particular, are doing amazing necessary work all over the country, and in Chicago especially. The rest of the world figured out how to contain COVID pretty effectively. PUP is still making bangers. There is some good in the world. All is not lost.
One last paragraph here where I’ll get a little sanctimonious. Sorry about it.
2020 will not be remember as the year Dylan Shearer turned thirty. Neither should it be. Plenty of other more important things have happened and will happen this revolution around the sun. The part of me that thinks I should be a Brad Pitt level star disagrees with those last two sentences, but that part of me can – usually – be controlled. Patton Oswalt has an old bit about how adults shouldn’t only celebrate their birthday ever ten years. It’s a good bit, but I think it’s wrong. I don’t think adults really need elaborate over-the-top celebrations every year, but they do provide us with a time to reflect, and a time to feel a little special. In an era where a lot of people feel helpless, beaten down, simple cogs in the inexorable machine of capitalism, injecting a little ego into the whole proceedings can’t hurt. But just a little. Think about it like this, my family has a rule that if you win a board game you’re the one who has to put it away. So you don’t get a big head. So have a birthday celebration about you, but when the day is over start thinking about who in your family or friend circle has the next one. Start planning that.
This blog is over.