I spent my day off pubcrawling, specifically a fish and chips and Mid event, predominantly in the company of those who get a seniors discount. War horses telling battle stories, about a time when only common sense governed the pubs and taverns.
They tell me about the “mad postie” who took his chainsaw to the supporting column out front, threatening to cut down the pub. About the owner who would refuse to open after so many days on a bender, having a party for one in the cellar, eventually drawn out by police in search of beer. They talk about women from thirty years ago, and three generations of bar patronage.
We are home before dusk, tipsy on all sides, and I can’t help feeling I need to reread Bill Bryson and compare notes.
This year, I suddenly noticed last week, all my significant exes turn 30.
I don’t know why this never occurred to me before. In contrast, my boyfriend is twenty five. I fall somewhere between, not a girl not yet a woman, or something like that.
Also, I dig vegemite.
I am proud of being the age I am, and feel like I’ve spent the time well. I’m just not that into the same place as the average person who is 30 right now, as far as I can figure out. Mentally. I noted this last week when I ventured out of the bar where I work to party with some kids from town.
There was music I’ve never heard but liked, discussion about dream travel plans, spooning of sleeping roommates, the sketchiest thing I’ve smoked from in awhile, and non rehearsed funny stories. It was like travelling back in time five years.
To a time when work only came up in the context of funny stories, people were into stuff like new music, and the future was a beautiful mystery.
I feel like a lot of people I know my age and older have a different relationship with the future. I tried to have it but couldn’t do it.
I also get that people get busy, with jobs and families and being responsible. This leaves less resources for interests, creates more pressure for ambitions.
Thank god there are people out there paying attention to children instead of dubstep remixes.
I am immature. I think stuff is funny that should not be. I still like bad choices. I get that.
But I want to hold on to the future being wide and beautiful instead of a future of goals and goalposts.
Filed under: when I grow up
People give me random stuff at work. A poem. Hugs. A glass of cab sav with a vodka shot. Job offers and invitations for coffee and a ride to the airport.
I have had more than one customer feed me, literally. From their plates, or sometimes platters of appetizers I am serving.
The most common, though, are tips and phone numbers.
(Oddly, I don’t get asked for my number much, which is useful when you consider I don’t know it. With multiple bank cards, addresses and passwords my mind is pretty much tapped out on numbers.)
Anyways, today was a first. A guy in his fifties who is a reasonably successful business man – and a close friend of my boss – slipped me his number and alluded to plane rides and tropical beaches. I blushed, like I do when awkwardly surprised. To be honest, creepy come ons by older men are not the standard for me. I skew young, and I sort of like it that way.
But wait! There’s more! A few weeks ago, I was given a business card and another invitation by… his twenty something son.
Just another day at the office, kids.
I woke up calculating if it is too early for my liver to deal with pain killers, and thinking about watching the sunrise. Yes, no.
Highlights included being sung to by a table of melodious bikers, actually through the day being sung to more than ever, and drinks with some kids not born in the eighties. We talked MTV and text booty calls. Facebook booty calls. Whether x x makes it more sincere.
On my own, I went out for coffee and a stroll around town in the sunshine. Ate nice cake. On my twentieth birthday, relatively alone in a new town I bought myself a bottle of Merlot and an Edith Wharton paperback. This year, apothecary moisturiser, a pot for my face and a tube for everywhere else. Both years felt awfully similar. I think I spent my birthday that year doing something academic, a term paper or studying for exams. I spent this one mostly working. Both years found me more or less alone in a strange place following a wild card life decision, both days relatively undefined by close relationships.
(Can I say, though, I love my twenty year old self choice of presents?)
It doesn’t really matter who remembers as long as someone does, or what the cake is like as long as there is some. I was glad to have avoided the circulated office card that feels on level with the email greeting my bank sends, and more grateful for anyone who overcame the time zone obstacles to call. Mostly though I was happy to tick the clock over another year and look out on this last one as the beautiful messy thing it was.
Wages here for normal people are insane, which is why I’m always blown away by people who say the reason they don’t travel is financial. It is by far the most popular reason given, wistfully by people in their twenties. The irony is not lost on me that I earn twenty five to thirty percent of what they make (and pay for stuff like health insurance). Do they think I have some weird trust fund? A benefactor? Who knows.
Everything I know about funding long term travel is ridiculously simple.
1. Don’t own stuff. Stuff costs money to get, keep and haul around. This financial investment turns into an emotional one. Also, the modern world of travel is way cheaper with less luggage.
2. Expense is wildly variable. Striking a balance out of your normal surroundings is actually the same as living within your means at home.
3. I don’t subscribe to the ideas that I should see or do things because “everyone” does them in whatever place, or that “you only live once and will never have the chance to do this random thing you never knew you wanted to do again”. If it strikes me I do it or see it, but I’ve let a lot of stuff pass with no real long term regret. Who cares if I can sit around the hotel bar and have the biggest list of enviable status quo experiences? Pissing. Contest.
4. Allow time. Most of my withdrawals from my “oh crap” fund are a result of not allowing enough time – for transit, to see what I wanted to see properly, to make informed decisions about where to stay and how to get there. Duress equals expense.
5. Most advice is bad. This included.
Filed under: voyageur
Two plans. If cheap flights East come up, East it is. Otherwise, a backroads loop on the West coast heading back to the airport. Home, air strikes and volcanos willing, for valentines.
After a couple of weeks spent working, taking lazy trips to the grocery store and drowning breaks in good coffee, I’m feeling like it’s time to get a better feel for the town. See stuff, do things. Work down the list. A day off plus a decent map has my head spinning with possibilities, and I need more than the after work Passion Pop sessions to distract me from missing LG.
The worst I’ll find are ten more beautiful beaches.
