Here’s the thing. At 30 you’re still young enough to do anything, if only you start now.
By the time you hit 41 (my age), you realize that the vast cloud of potential futures you had when you were 20 or even 30 are now narrowed down to just a few. I’m never going to go back to school and become a paleontologist, the closest I’ll ever get to that dream is volunteer work. I’ve got two kids, and while it might somehow happen that other children will come into my life, the likelihood is that these two particular children will be my only children.
It’s not that I feel particularly old at 41, it’s just that the future seems so contracted now. This is it, this is my life, and it’s already half over, and right now the only thing I really care about it taking care of my kids and giving them a good future.
Or maybe I’m just in a funk and need to be shaken up. But damn, in the last few years I’m hearing door after door slam. Not that I gave a rat’s ass about those doors when they weren’t shut, it’s just a bit of a shock to realize that all those doors I was blithely walking by when I was 30 are now locked doors.