30 things for turning 30.

I’ve been consumed by a lot lately: work stress (primarily) and life stress and of course, the slow realization that I turn 30 next week. I didn’t think I’d be feeling this way, I’m not too precious or naive to believe that 30 signifies old. But, I am aware enough of how much I’ve changed from 18 > 21 > 25 > 30.There’s the obvious stuff like getting drunk makes hangovers worse now and my knees hurt more than they ever have before. Then there’s the less obvious stuff: acknowledging what I want out of a career, being open about the type of relationship I’m building, and being finally purposeful about the depression and anxiety I’ve dealt with my whole life. In many ways, I am better at 30 than I was. I’m stronger, I’m more sure of my likes and dislikes, I have a wonderful partner, a steady stream of income, a rich friend group that enjoys being around me, and plenty of hobbies. But anyway, I started collecting this list in general of 30 places, things, songs, and whatever abstract thought consumed me over three decades of living. In no particular order, rhyme, or reason.

1. His Dark MaterialsThe books and recently the series. Rewatching the HBO mini-series made me more aware of what I liked so much about them as a kid. When I was reading them I was drawn to the idea of religion as authoritarian and naively I thought it was because I was a superior thinker. Now I recognize it has a lot of really positive queer representation and themes.

2. Gilmore Girls I finished the entire series in 2022, thanks to Zach. I can safely say it’s probably my favorite TV series I’ve ever watched. There’s a way that the writers create their world that really resonates with me. I’m particularly interested in the ways they display love and romance and relationships as I think they have a lot of complicated points and opinions that are buried in the sort of campy sweet slice-of-life drama. I want to write more about it, but I need more time and watching to fully digest it.

3. Two visits to the Chihuly Garden and Glass. The first time I remember taking a picture pointed up at the ceiling where a collection of various glass objects rested. I applied a bad filter over it (because it was 2017) but still fell in love with the place: the free form of the glass, the delicateness of something so easily breakable towering above you everywhere. When I visited it again I cried. A lot was going on in my life at the time and I was reminded of the fragileness of everything around us and how a bad enough storm could break even the most beautiful things. The emo Instagram caption I left then probably sums up my dramatic mood best:There are parts of you I leave behind, in hopes that from them something new could bloom.It’s overly sentimental, but a true feeling nevertheless. I’m deciding at 30 to be okay with sentimentality as an emotion: it’s always okay to tell someone how you feel.

4. Zilker Park in the Pandemic in the SummerThat’s how I first met Zach. It was the literal hottest day of the summer and I was wearing all black. We had been texting for a bit and I was still skittish about meeting someone without a vaccine and someone that worked in person. But I really wanted to meet him. So I planned a meet-up in the park, put down a blanket and we just talked and drank ciders. He brought a small cast-iron pan with a cookie cake and I had one of the best dates I’ve ever had. Now we live together and he keeps me updated on all the role-playing games he keeps downloading.

5. Swamplandia! Karen Russell’s Swamplandia is probably the closest actual book that inspired me to write more. I remember reading her book at UTSA when I was having a miserable and lonely time and just being heartbroken over how events unfolded. She’s one of the greats of short story writing and she helped me understand the power that the right arrangement of words can have on someone, or how the perfect story can draw you in.

6. Running into my creative writing professor on a random day in Austin. We briefly said hi and I remember making some joke about having to go back to visit the parents. She said something about it being old enough now that it’s a pleasure to go back and I think about that a lot each year I get older. We ran into each other again after class, and she reminded me to not take others’ critiques of my short story too seriously and that what was important is the consistency of your universe makes sense.

7. Starting therapy. When I started therapy I did it for a dumb reason. I wanted to fix a relationship, to be better. Instead, I realized what I was missing, gave names to the things I’ve felt, and got much needed support and guidance after a particularly taxing breakup.

8. Restarting therapy. I stopped going to therapy a bit into the pandemic, shortly after I met Zach. The truth was it was time for me to stop, I wasn’t getting the same thing out of it that I had before. I had learned my anxieties, I had voiced my feelings over a breakup, I had done the hard and grueling work of becoming someone different, not for anyone else but for myself. Now I’m in a different place with different needs. I can acknowledge what I’m lacking, name the things I’m feeling. I’m restarting with a plan of what to explore and what to get better at.

9. When He Sees Me from the WaitressThis started as a joke because of the tiktok trend, then it evolved to actually listening to it and then evolved into Zach singing it when he’s in a good mood and now if I hear it I cry.

10. Portions for Foxes by Rilo Kiley

11. Big Bend. At night in Terlingua, just outside of Big Bend the stars stretch on for miles. Inside Big Bend the basin houses life, the cliffs and ravines made from years of weather and erosion. In part of it I left myself. In part of it I found the strength to move on. I wrote a story about Big Bend. I want to publish it some day, but it needs to be improved. Two Lines I like from it are: ”And suddenly those points contracted would collapse. Those long things stretched would push together into this tangled mess of black barbs and anxiety. You would choose, like you always did, some way of expanding and when you did you would leave, forever.””There is a strangeness to the past of someone you love. It never feels like home, but like someplace you visited once and returned again. Familiar, but obscure.”

12. Coming Out, which is something you do almost every day. I think about how at 15 or 14 I was so scared of what it meant to be gay. Now I’m in love with it. My queerness occupies every part of me, even when I think it doesn’t. It’s informed who I love, how I love, how I talk and walk and write and what I hope for. If the 14-year-old depressed me could see me now I think he’d be stunned by how I’ve changed. Now I learn something new every day, my perception of queerness evolving every year.

13. Light on by Maggie Rogers

14. Somewhere a Judge by Hop AlongI don't know why I'm so mean each time I come to visit

15. Clean Socks by Remember Sports

16. An impossibly hot coral room in Bellaire Houston where I watched my grandmother die. When it was her last day they called us over to say goodbye to her and we did and when we were gone she died. And a part of me understands that dying is so artificial, controlled by medicine and drugs. But another part of me understands the power our love has over people, the strength it takes to hold on till someone says goodbye.

17. Beloved by Toni Morrison“Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all.”

18. Kurt Vonnegut“A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”

19. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders“We were perhaps not so unlovable as we had come to believe.”

20. The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker“How much sweeter life would be if it all happened in reverse, if, after decades of disappointments, you finally arrived at an age when you had conceded nothing, when everything was possible.”

21. Italo Calvino - Invisible CitiesIf any other author made me want to write it was Italo Calvino. I remember visiting some family connection, not a direct relative but she lived in Houston and taught at the University of Houston. She had a giant library with the quintessential ladder on a rail. She taught Italian, or something close and had all these books by Calvino in the original Italian. I remember her saying something about how you can never truly read Calvino unless you read it in Italian and it made me fall in love with foreign writers and translation. Knowing that what you get is the closest approximation of something, but not always the exact is just a thrilling sensation to me.

22. 75mg of Amitryptiline, daily, at night time, to help with the drowsiness.

23. That nagging feeling that you are valid, people like spending time with you, and sometimes it’s okay to stop trying to improve yourself.

24. Sunday mornings with Zach, drinking coffee, going to brunch with our friends, and watching TV together.

25. Not living with Cody, living with Cody, not living with Cody again. In keeping in line with not being afraid of sentimentality I used to hate so much the thought of being close to my twin. It felt cliche or embarrassing, like “oh you can’t get better friends” but the older I get the more I understand the strength of that love. To have someone you know who knows you, to be connected, always there. That a part of me carries a part of him with me forever. Living together could be bad and distance has made our relationship better and for that, I’m so grateful.

26. Too much diet coke. I want one right now actually…

27. Dallas, Whitesboro Texas, Indianola Texas, Seattle, San Francisco, New York City, The Sherwood Forest Fairy, and every other place I learned again and again what love is.

28. Olive and Capri and Valentine and countless other dogs I’ve loved.

29. Writing short stories, even if they don’t get published.

30. Chocolate Chunk Scones with a Coldbrew from Quacks - seriously, a perfect combination.