So, This is 30…

Being old(er) is fucking awesome.

I remember being 13 (yeah that was a really fucking long time ago), throwing around my freshly acquired, shitty teenage attitude at my family by saying things like, “I can’t wait to turn 16 and get my license.” Naturally, the implicit notion there was that I’d be liberated from my perceived adolescent imprisonment at home. Because fuck you; you can’t tell me what to do.

I ended up dragging ass on that project, getting my license when I was 17 years old instead. Typical.

I remember turning 18 years old, saying things like “I can’t wait to turn 21.” Quite naturally, the implicit notion there was that I could be like all the cool kids and hang out at bars, stay out late, go to Vegas, party my ass off, and do whatever the fuck I wanted.

I ended up doing all of those things, and more. Lots more. Much of it was done to excess. For reference, the works and lives of Hemingway, Bukowski, Hunter Thompson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the fictional author Hank Moody (Californication) were my guideposts.

I smoked. I drank my ass off. I partied. I fucked. I fucked people off, left and right. I made excuses about behaving the way I did. I made excuses about treating people the way I did. I took trips. I tripped out. I jumped out of an airplane. I participated in all sorts of late night adventures and more experimentation and debauchery than I care to recount or relate in an online post like this one. Seriously, the years between ages 19 through 26 are a goddamned blur, punctuated by very clear snapshot recollections of people, places, and experiences that I still cannot chronologically organize or place. I just know that they happened. I still don’t know exactly when, in what year, and at what age those things took place. At best, I have vague notions about the “when” or “why” aspects of those memories.

I remember turning 26 years old — hung over and completely demoralized — thinking to myself “Fuck. This shit has got to stop.” I only said this out loud to a handful of friends. I wasn’t about to publicly trade in my blasé millenial Nihilism for stability, good judgement, responsibility, and a generally sane life. These are all the things which I’d tried to live my life in order to disprove the desirability of. So, that year, I partied and pushed as hard as I could. But in truth, those were the very things I’d been longing for. I’d never stopped to consider how to have them in my life.

…and a month before my 27th birthday, I decided it was time to stop. I had to. The consequences of my actions (both internal and external, simultaneously spiritual/emotional and material) had finally started to catch up with me. So, I stopped all at once, and totally.

I’ll be forever grateful for that little voice in my head; the one which compelled me to finally put away a completely dysfunctional toolbox of attitudes, ideations, habits, and behaviors that were entirely counterproductive to living a fulfilling life. I owe an even greater debt of gratitude to those individuals, collectives, and spiritual resources which actually helped me pick myself up again and learn how to live a better way; a wealth of family, unwavering friends, and fellowships that I didn’t deserve, and that I won’t ever forget.

36 months and 16 days later, I’m fucking 30 years old.

In sharp contrast with the hazy, anarchic, and exhilarating first 7 years of my 20’s, the last 3 have been crystal clear. While sometimes hectic and often challenging, the magical exhilaration of living my life has somehow remained constant. It’s still an adventure. Growing older hasn’t been boring.

The excitement never stopped.

I didn’t choose to “grow up.” I simply chose to grow. It’s a choice that, once I learned I had, I have done my very best to continue to make each and every day. As it turns out, there are ways of living a mindful, considerate, thoughtful, intentional life of non-harm (non-harm towards all beings, including self) while still retaining the sparkle, shine, tragedy, uncertainty, and excitement of life itself. Fucking illuminating, isn’t it? What a shock. Lots of people grow into knowing this much earlier than age 27, but I didn’t. I only opened myself up to learning, accepting, and practicing this in the last few years. I guess I’m a late bloomer. Maybe I just suffer from a really, really severe case of Peter Pan Syndrome.

…or maybe, I just had to stop being an asshole.

A rare portrait of me in my 20’s. Sums me up pretty well. Consider it a visual aid.

What have I learned?

• It’s not that I don’t know *anything*, it’s just that I know much less than I think I do.
• It’s okay to think I know some stuff about some stuff.
• It’s okay to admit I don’t know lots of stuff.
• It’s best to keep my opinion of how much shit I *think* I know in equal proportion with how much shit I *know* I don’t know.
• Having, holding, and living by principles and values is worth the effort.
• Nobody gives a shit about why I paid my bills late. Pay your fucking debts.
• Everybody’s bet on a fart and lost, at least once. Shit happens, literally.
• Self-obsession is a disease.
• Self-care is sexy. People are attracted to that shit.
• Oversharing is a real thing, and I should avoid it when it’s not appropriate.
• If nobody’s asked for my opinion, it’s best not to drop it like I’m Dr. Phil’s chosen successor. Nobody likes a Dr. Phil. Don’t be a Dr. Phil.
• When I can’t help myself, don’t. Seek out help from other human beings. If I could help myself, I wouldn’t need help.
• Yoda’s “do or do not, there is no try,” is axiomatic. It’s fucking self-evident truth.
• It’s better to live my life within a framework that allows for the commitment and correction of mistakes, rather than to try to live a life wherein I don’t give myself the permission to make any mistakes.
• Give myself permission to fuck up, but try not to commit the same fuckup repeatedly.
• Sometimes, “being there” for someone is simply shutting the fuck up and listening. It’s not that hard. I don’t always have to say something, or have answers. People want to be heard. They’re not always looking for input. They appreciate that shit.
• It’s very easy to find new and innovative ways to commit the same fuckup if I’m not being mindful and looking at myself.
• I need to keep my F-I-L-D-I strong, but before I act I need to remember to measure thrice and cut once one. (FILDI = Fuck It, Let’s Do It)
• Laughter is necessary. Seek it out, create it, and share it abundantly.
• Entitlement atrophies ability.
• Suffering is the great equalizer, and also necessary. Stare it right in the face, do your best not to create more of it, and share your experience of it with others.
• Cheese still constipates the hell out of me. This probably won’t ever change.
• Brie is probably the best cheese there is.
• Everyone is always just doing the best they know how to do, the same as me. We’re all fucked in very colorful and amusingly different ways.
• There is, in fact, a way for me to have a relationship with my parents that feels like friendship. And it is good. And it is worth fighting for, and working on.
• Everyone’s on their own perpetual journey of self-unfucking. Try not to be a fucker to them.
• The translation of the word “karma” is “action,” not “reward.”
• People are not toys. Their feelings are not play-doh.
• Daily mantra: “Do something good for someone else without getting caught.” Taking or seeking credit for being of service to others is self-congratulatory ego masturbation.
• Pillows aren’t as good for cuddling as another person is.
• Self-esteem comes from taking esteemable actions and making esteemable choices. An audience is not required.
• Cuddling is not overrated.
• It’s important that I feel as though I have purpose. In order to feel this way, I need to seek purpose. Being without purpose (and doing things without purpose) is where depression and despair begin to creep into my life.
• Street tacos will always trump restaurant tacos, no matter what.
• Nothing good ever happens after 2:30 A.M.
• “I’m sorry” is an excuse. “What can I do to make it right?” is where the healing happens.
• Always opt for the extra guac. I only live once, and the world is my fucking avocado.
• “No,” can be a complete sentence. I don’t have to do things I don’t want to do.
• Doing some of the things I don’t want to do can lead to learning new things about what I actually want to do.
• Farting on the first date is usually not acceptable.
• If I’m seeking validation, I’m not going to find it out there, from other people. It comes from within.
• Authentic decency is more noble than overt nobility.
• Not everyone is going to like me. That’s okay.
• The people who get under my skin the most are probably the people I have the most to learn from.
• Giving a girl flowers isn’t out of fashion. It never will be, and it doesn’t get old.
• I should always check to make sure there’s enough toilet paper to wipe my ass with before I sit down to have myself a nice shit. In many ways, this is a metaphor for life itself.
• Being humble doesn’t mean I have to minimize myself. Humility is having a modest and honest estimation of one’s self. It means I have to be “right-sized,” not self-deprecating.
• Humility isn’t a thing I’m supposed to talk about possessing. It’s something I’m supposed to practice without advertising.
• Always say “please and thank you” like Ron Swanson does. “Please” and “thank you” stated separately are cool too.
• Read books. Lots of them. Don’t be afraid to break the spine, dog-ear the important pages, and write notes for my future self to find and laugh at.
• Feelings and relationships are messy. Don’t be scared.
• If I’m scared, I should do it anyway. Courage isn’t the lack of fear. Courage is being afraid and doing it anyway.
• Planning in the hopes of perfect execution sidelines me from going out and doing the damn thing.
• As a being, who I am is iterative. I need to be okay with (and actively engaged in the process of) patching and upgrading the software of who I am on a daily basis.
• I need to remember Rule #62 — “Don’t take yourself so damn seriously.”
• Be grateful. Be grateful with deliberate intent.
• Repeat the important things I don’t want to forget.
• Repeat the important things I don’t want to forget.
• Go out and live the important things I repeat and don’t want to forget.

Where do I go from here?

Like I said earlier, the magic hasn’t died. The excitement is still there, even though a good deal of the observable debaucherous behaviors have been excised. I like to stay in, drink tea, light incense, and read books. Luckily, my little brother thinks I’m still cool enough to wanna hang out with, so I sometimes go to warehouse parties and raves too. I sit in pubs with good friends and play cards, reveling in the simple delights of laughing with friends and talking shit. I still listen to Shakira in my car. These are the simple joys of life, and they’re worth trading in my extreme behaviors for.

This is 30. It’s exactly like 20, but I make better life decisions (sorta), treat others with more consideration, understand consequences (sorta), have money, and can do whatever the fuck I want without anybody telling me what I can or can’t do. It’s really great. Honestly, it is.

For the first time since I dropped out of school and started working (age 20), I’m going to be taking a career hiatus, so I can pursue a long-standing dream of mine. Climbing to Senior/Lead Engineer positions without a diploma — after dropping out of UCLA as an English major — has been one insanely wild ride. It’s the one accomplishment in my life that I speak about with pride (and a dash of self-importance). I’m still working on how central and important this narrative is to my sense of identity, but it is what it is. In all of the insanity and shitty irresponsibility of my 20’s, one of the only things I’ve maintained and developed consistently is my career. Somehow, I’ve been a successful, professionally responsible, workaholic fuckup.

In an attempt to continue my steady trend of failing upward, I’m going to go work only on my software engineering skills for the next 3 months. Because, why the fuck not?

I’ve got things to build.

I guess, in a sense, it’s hilariously appropriate. I spent most of my 20’s burning and destroying everything. The theme for this first portion of my 20’s had been “seek & destroy.” I spent the last few years of my 20’s unburdening myself of all the residual shit I piled up and carried with me. The theme for this latter portion of my 20’s has been to “uncover, discover, discard.” Getting right with the things and the people I’ve done wrong. It’s been a very subtractive process; I’ve been peeling away aspects of my self and my life that don’t work, keeping in mind that sometimes I cannot think my way into the right actions, but that I can act my way into the right thinking (so long as I check both my thinking and my actions with a few other people whom I can trust).

I’m starting in on 30 with the notion that it’s time to start building and creating some things. The daily mindfulness of self-unburdening and self-unfucking will continue, but I’d like to add a dash of creativity into the mix. So, I’m going to go and learn how to do that for the next 3 months. Beyond that, I have no fucking idea what’s to come. And I love it.

The fun hasn’t stopped. I don’t think it ever will, so long as I remember to get myself out of my life’s way, let it do its thing, and be grateful that I get to go along for the ride as the current of the river takes me wherever it is I’m going. I choose to stay grateful. Now that I know better — and I understand that I possess the possibility and responsibility of choice — I won’t let my life pass me by in a hazy blur, ever gain.

It’s a non-stop disco.

That’s right, my final words here are an homage to System of A Down. That’s how I’m going to close this out. Because, why the fuck not?

_ Armen R.