the daily snivel

It's my birthday today. More than that, today is my thirtieth birthday, a turning point on the old odometer which doesn't exactly come along every rotation of the earth around its sun. I spent it out with my friends Natalie, Celeste, and Mélanie, where we went out to dinner at the Royal Thai (where I enjoyed my perennial favourite order, veggie spring rolls and a vegetarian Pad Thai Chay), had deep-fried ice cream in the Byward Market for dessert, and rounded out the evening over pints at the Dominion Tavern. Aside from last year, when I attended a wonderful surprise birthday party with my nearest and dearest, I think this was one of the most enjoyable times I've had out -- it was simple and relaxing and was free of hellish things like the stress of exams and crippling X-mas student poverty for the first time in ten years.

Another reason that I had such a nice birthday was that it was free of any need to take any kind of deep, serious account of my life given that one's thirtieth birthday is, I gather, a time of serious reckoning for many. I think many people see turning thirty as a turning point in their lives, given that you've ostensibly shed the irresponsibility of your twenties, or at least entered a new marketing demographic. And your back gets sore sometimes. And you can't stay up without sleep as long as you could -- or at least you've accepted the wisdom of naps. And when you sleep, you can't sleep through the night without getting up to go to the bathroom. And the ex-girlfriend you lost your virginity to eleven years ago has a blog now, and writes about how thick her pubic hair is growing now that she's that old. That kind of thing.

I feel quite good about turning thirty. There's no ominous sense of mortality, no cold grip of death on my shoulder, or a sense of lost time, or missed opportunities, or a ticking biological clock -- or any of that. I'd definitely rather be thirty than twenty -- and in particular, I'd rather be me at thirty than me at twenty. At twenty, I was a perfect specimen of a young man with lots of potential, but it was wholly unrealized potential. I hadn't realized the extent to which I could control my life and my anger and other emotions. I was at the beginning of my undergraduate degree, and still felt I knew a lot more than I really did.

Still, because lists are always good blog fodder, let's talk about why I feel so good about turning thirty:

• I've graduated law school
  
• I've got a great job helping people who otherwise wouldn't see justice
  
• The people I'm working for think I'm a fantastic articling student, to the extent that I was praised at a recent hearing that "there isn't a lawyer in Ottawa who could have argued that motion better" than I did.
  
• In a matter of months, I'll be a full-fledged lawyer
  
• I've still got all my hair
  
• And I haven't sprouted back hair, nose hair, or ear hair in the meantime
  
• I'm still a regular at the gym and I can bench 250 pounds
  
• There's at least one landlord out there having nightmares about me and the awesome (if withering) cross-examination I subjected her to
  
• I don't live in Toronto anymore
  
• Despite everything that happened this past fall, "I'm feeling much better now"
  
• I'm surrounded by great friends and a wonderful family
  
• I'm not a conservative
  
• I have a wicked awesome music collection for someone my age
  
• Even at thirty, there's no pesky erectile dysfunction for me
  
• I finally got my frickin' driver's licence
  
• There's at least one cat out there who loves me
  
• I still have godlike leg muscles
  
• I've won a bunch of awards
  
• I'm way more fun in the sack than I was at my supposed "sexual peak" of 18
  
• I'm a much better cook now, too
  
• I dress myself a lot better than I ever did ten years ago
  
• I know that I don't know it all
  

I still feel really young, and I know the best is yet to come. I haven't jumped yonder shark, I haven't peaked, and this isn't all there is for me. So bring it on, thirty. You don't scare me.