okay so the skinny jeans didn't work out for me so well …

Getting older can be rather depressing.  It comes and goes in phases.  The first is when you turn 30, then you get over it and then you find your way back to it.  I’m 36; someone out there my age is already retired.  Someone else has already accomplished whatever it was they had set out to do in life.  People are either kind or maybe I really do not look to be as old as I am.  I must be like 23, no more than 25, to hear them tell it.  My only explanation for that would be that I haven’t had the life that other people my age have had, haven’t done a lot of those “destructive things” or engaged in “bad habits” though I’m sure there is plenty else that I do that is.

I try to write.  I never really wanted to be a writer, I think I went through that phase where it seemed glamorous, particularly when the Internet democratized and transformed the profession.  Now everyone with any thought about anything is writing online.  Some are aware of it, others, like those in social networks, video blogs or those addicted to forums, aren’t so much.

I burned myself out on it trying to get published in print and tried to walk away from it just to relax.  Stop censoring myself so much and just said how I felt.  Stopped obsessing over the perfect form and the perfect prose, just let it come out naturally.  I get about enough cash for gasoline or some “water” of sorts.  I like the idea of the vitamins and minerals, and whatever other borderline drugs right there in the concoction.  I can calm myself down, amp myself up, whatever within reason.  I don’t like crashing and burning, and I don’t like anything illegal.  The consequences sure as hell are not worth the benefits.  I find irony in the fact that we spent the better part of the twentieth century with prohibition and the fight against drugs just to cave in and allow people to produce all sorts of things to be dispensed in a legal setting.  You have to love a culture that uses a rapper that has glorified the sale of drugs to posit a performance water that in and of itself serves as a drug. 

You also have to love a society in which soft drink companies are now the largest producers of said “water”.  Today’s cola wars are Vitamin Water vs. Sobe Life Water, Coke vs. Pepsi all over again as Coke bought out the company that makes Vitamin Water.  You have to love that; we haven’t evolved, we’ve just found a healthier, more subtle, way to do what we’ve always been doing.  Nobody seems to understand that.  I watched a video about how American Apparel is supposedly using an award winning adult film star to sell t-shirts.  I had never heard about her until now, how ironic is that.  

It’s just a matter of time before these adult film stars become mainstream movie stars anyway.  But they shouldn’t wait for that to happen; make the films themselves interesting and learn how to write and create regular films without sex.  I know that Hollywood has digressed towards including more “content” in their own movies, but this would be a cool way to differentiate yourself and to actually surprise people for a change.

But taboos are so old.  So now back to how I find myself amongst the Gen Y when I don’t necessarily feel comfortable there.  At some point in the conversation you are reminded just how old you are.  It could be a cultural reference that they don’t get, or you getting hyped up about something oddly familiar from your cultural vault that is supposed to be something completely new to them.  Then there’s uncomfortable laughter, an awkward silence, let’s move on.  You have either exposed yourself for the fraud you are, or it’s just dawned on you what time it really is.  To you the most beautiful woman is Halle Berry, she isn’t that much older than me could be your age, you could actually see yourself as that one self-righteous guy that can’t understand how her two husband messed up actually getting their chance to make things right, you would treat her right, be that stand up man.

To them the most beautiful woman is Beyonce Knowles, she isn’t that much older than they are or could be your age, they could actually see themselves as that one self-righetous guy that can’t understand why she wants Jay-Z and would treat her right, be that stand up young adult.   They don’t see what’s so great about Halle Berry, you’re not supposed to see what’s so great about Beyonce, but you probably do.  You’re supposed to know better, but ah yes, you can’t, because there is no logical reason to do, unless you’re a hater.  Being a hater is so nineties, eighties even, best not to show your true age.  Given Jay-Z’s age, you’re probably thinking that you really do have an honest chance at her.

I’ve never understood people who go find someone half their age, and I probably should.  Men who had idealized and worshipped intellectualism in a woman that dated a lot of angry feminists in their youth that played them like a chump end up going after the same dumb blondes that everyone else does once they’re forty.  Now they have the money and means to do so, which they didn’t then.  You’re feeling good about yourself, you can get the Ed Hardy t-shirt, and the True Religion jeans, but you’re old school so you’ll nix the True Religion jeans, pull out the Diesel jeans and a Guess dress shirt and a Polo windbreaker and put it all together. You may as well be wearing Nike to the prom.  No, and not just because of the conflict of interests as to what your look says you are about either.  It’s who you are, how confident you are that makes it work.  Guys it’s not about how smart she is, it’s about how smart you can make her, or how smart she can make you feel about the premise that you think you are getting some of that knowledge through to her; emotional intelligence is undervalued yet interestingly priceless in a woman.  Stop trying to be more complex than what you truly are at your core.   

You’re going to get played either way it’s going to happen if it’s meant to happen, your “match”, that woman that stops you in your tracks, could be as young as 21 or as old as 57 get over it and move on.  But back to the age thing, if you’re open to something, you’re advertising and you’re looking, you may not feel so but your subconscious sure thinks so.  That’s about all I’ve learned over the years.  In fact what is supposed to divide us as human beings, out of our own ignorance, has never worked for me, it is rather ineffective.  For me there was always an intellectual curiousity, so I’m either destined to have an unconventional life or I haven’t learned how to kill off who I truly am and just file and rank and play the game already.

A lot of us are telling other people not to do something that we are doing ourselves, just in a different form.  That was the hypocrisy that drove me as a teenager, but now I wonder if I don’t find myself doing the same to those that come after me.  There is so much that you understand, truly understand, that you only have a conspicuous appreciation for at best as a youngster.  The clothing I wore, the stuff I aspired to have, the computers, the culture, the music, the relationships, what my mother was trying to tell me, everything.

So what is a mid-life crisis; do we want to be younger so that we can do it all over again without making the mistakes that we had made at the time?  Date that 20 year old girl, just that now we won’t get our hearts broken or our feelings hurt, we won’t get pressured into getting married we’ll actually get along with their parents, what is it?  Try to wait a while longer, have more of a “friendship” what is it that we’re really looking for?  As romantic as all of that sounds that would so be like, not at all living life as people do at that age.  Those who do the right things aren’t doing so out of experience, they’re doing it from some noble sense of values, albeit niave, that were beat into them.  They don’t understand the emotions behind the responsibility, just fear the consequences to their actions that someone else had to suffer through.

Ideally, your children can look back and say that they had dodged a bullet.  But what is to keep them from going back towards the danger as an adult just because they’re bored?  That’s something we don’t have any control over.  Gen X complains that Gen Y uses for amusement a lot of the technologies they created.  So who really cares, isn’t that a good thing, isn’t it great that at the very least, the generation that followed ours “gets” what we were trying to do instead of critiquing it?  How important is the credit really, I mean it’s nice, but then again so are Grammys and Oscars as well.

Life isn’t about any one person that looks or seems great, it is about the hundreds, if not thousands of people in the background making it happen.  Making it possible for you to see that one person in the first place.  Just be happy and fortunate that you were able to be part of something great.  Your time will come when it is right, and you won’t have to fight over other people to be seen either.  

That much being said I have only lived half of my life.  Is it an optimistic outlook, sure.  But can I afford the luxury of pessimissim this far into the game, not at all …