Aah yes, a reading comprehension fail on my part. Something in this really spoke to me, and I made my way through the rest of your writing that afternoon. I think we've had some similar experiences and perspectives; I also have been trying very hard to get published without much success over the past couple of years and I'd never read a summation of the emotional toll of that before, so, while 'enjoyed' is probably the wrong word, I am glad to have read your piece on literary rejection. It's always a visceral pleasure to read something expressed so clearly.
In this piece, I particularly loved:
"This is why youth is so desirable as a state; it feels like there is time to waste. Youth is the part of our lives when we can follow the side quest, get pleasantly lost, and return to the main narrative in good time. I am nostalgic for the Berlin of my youth, seeing friends, going out drinking – and recovering very quickly! – and the casual sociability of youthful lives. Now, even before the pandemic many of my friends had moved into the world of responsible child-rearing, and even those who hadn’t I saw less frequently, though always gladly. Gone for good though is ‘just hanging-out’, those loose hours of talk, spontaneity and shared experience; much as I’d like to have them back, there might be something somewhat undignified about a 40-year old man organizing a sleepover. Anyway, sleepovers were there at least in part to teach me social lessons and behaviours I have already learnt."
I'm turning 32 this year so a bit behind you, but I feel this state slipping away from me too. Perhaps a few final sparks before it fades entirely, but I feel its passing too. It's so strange that what I thought was just 'adulthood' for a decade was just the first iteration of it, life now feels as different to 22 as 22 did to 12.
Indeed. Another thing you find is a sort of nostalgia for the adjacent decade - your 20s are full of childhood somehow, and then in your 30s you're often thinking of youth. Does this mean my 40s will see me nostalgic for the heady days of my mid-30s? It seems unlikely, but I shouldn't underestimate my own capacity for nostalgia! Glad to have you on board, James
My sense is that young adulthood is such a distinct period, that you end up feeling a particular nostalgia for it for the rest of your life, and that your memories of those moods and experiences become more precious, and more distilled, the further you are from them, in a way I don't think will be true for other decades (although, who knows really?) Like you, I lived abroad when I was younger, met lots of different people, took detours to various places and it was a shock when I started to realise, in my late twenties I suppose, that while I can still revisit places that meant a lot to me, or have similar experiences now, the feelings it all precipitated when I was younger are unrecapturable, because they were about discovering the world for the first time and being formed by it. There was an openness and an excitement to my experience of the world that was a product of being in such a formative period, although it came with a lot of insecurity too. This poem captures it quite well I think -https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48418/sad-steps
I read somewhere that you're only 25 once, but you can be 45 for a really long time, which stayed with me, and it makes me wonder how different (in an emotional and existential sense) 35 will feel to 45, or even 45 to 55, although time will tell I suppose. If you can start your 40s with a measure of contentment, perhaps it's no bad thing to be reasonably sure things will keep ticking along.
Looking forward to your next post, whenever it comes!
By which i mean, put this in a drawer (not online) and see how you feel when you're sixty. By then you'll have crossed the real dividing line, not this strange narcissistic one you've found. The real dividing line is the death of both of your parents.
Happy belated birthday. This was a truly outstanding piece of writing.
Thank you! I'm pleased to say you're ahead of schedule - my 40th is on September 14th of this year.
Aah yes, a reading comprehension fail on my part. Something in this really spoke to me, and I made my way through the rest of your writing that afternoon. I think we've had some similar experiences and perspectives; I also have been trying very hard to get published without much success over the past couple of years and I'd never read a summation of the emotional toll of that before, so, while 'enjoyed' is probably the wrong word, I am glad to have read your piece on literary rejection. It's always a visceral pleasure to read something expressed so clearly.
In this piece, I particularly loved:
"This is why youth is so desirable as a state; it feels like there is time to waste. Youth is the part of our lives when we can follow the side quest, get pleasantly lost, and return to the main narrative in good time. I am nostalgic for the Berlin of my youth, seeing friends, going out drinking – and recovering very quickly! – and the casual sociability of youthful lives. Now, even before the pandemic many of my friends had moved into the world of responsible child-rearing, and even those who hadn’t I saw less frequently, though always gladly. Gone for good though is ‘just hanging-out’, those loose hours of talk, spontaneity and shared experience; much as I’d like to have them back, there might be something somewhat undignified about a 40-year old man organizing a sleepover. Anyway, sleepovers were there at least in part to teach me social lessons and behaviours I have already learnt."
I'm turning 32 this year so a bit behind you, but I feel this state slipping away from me too. Perhaps a few final sparks before it fades entirely, but I feel its passing too. It's so strange that what I thought was just 'adulthood' for a decade was just the first iteration of it, life now feels as different to 22 as 22 did to 12.
Best,
Eden
Indeed. Another thing you find is a sort of nostalgia for the adjacent decade - your 20s are full of childhood somehow, and then in your 30s you're often thinking of youth. Does this mean my 40s will see me nostalgic for the heady days of my mid-30s? It seems unlikely, but I shouldn't underestimate my own capacity for nostalgia! Glad to have you on board, James
My sense is that young adulthood is such a distinct period, that you end up feeling a particular nostalgia for it for the rest of your life, and that your memories of those moods and experiences become more precious, and more distilled, the further you are from them, in a way I don't think will be true for other decades (although, who knows really?) Like you, I lived abroad when I was younger, met lots of different people, took detours to various places and it was a shock when I started to realise, in my late twenties I suppose, that while I can still revisit places that meant a lot to me, or have similar experiences now, the feelings it all precipitated when I was younger are unrecapturable, because they were about discovering the world for the first time and being formed by it. There was an openness and an excitement to my experience of the world that was a product of being in such a formative period, although it came with a lot of insecurity too. This poem captures it quite well I think -https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48418/sad-steps
I read somewhere that you're only 25 once, but you can be 45 for a really long time, which stayed with me, and it makes me wonder how different (in an emotional and existential sense) 35 will feel to 45, or even 45 to 55, although time will tell I suppose. If you can start your 40s with a measure of contentment, perhaps it's no bad thing to be reasonably sure things will keep ticking along.
Looking forward to your next post, whenever it comes!
Eden
Happy Birthday James! Take static from no one on your birthday!
By which i mean, put this in a drawer (not online) and see how you feel when you're sixty. By then you'll have crossed the real dividing line, not this strange narcissistic one you've found. The real dividing line is the death of both of your parents.
Thanks for reading. Many of my friends haven't been lucky enough to make sixty - so, with all due respect, I'm happy to share this now.