ColumnConscious life, hear me roar.

A friend commented on a recent column I wrote, saying, “The last time I went to hear a band in Boston, I realized I’d become the creepy older guy in the back of the room.”

“Creepy?” I asked him. “We’ve become creepy?”

Christ.

A few weeks ago I hit an indie music shop and instead of plopping down a dogeared album or a new band’s CD, I – completely embarrassed – laid down The Essential Simon & Garfunkel.

“Please, don’t say anything,” I said to the earlobe-gauged-20-something year old behind the counter. “I just like a few songs on this.”

“Hey,” he said from his perch looking down at me, “S&G have street cred!”

“Hmmmm….yes, they do,” I said, raising my eyebrows. “And staying power, too.”

Driving home from a meeting the following weekend, I called the only foodie I really know to tell her about my dinner.

“Oven fired pizza with local cheeses and veggies, and, don’t laugh at me, a beet, goat cheese, and spinach salad,” I said over her immediate laughter. But it tasted good regardless, I thought. And Simon and Garfunkel are still in music stores and I am still going to hear new bands – so have I really lost my edge?

I tried explaining it to my father.

“Edge?” He shouted, exasperated. “How do you ‘lose your edge?'”

I rubbed the rounded side of the dinner table. “Like this…not with an edge, dull, old hat.” He still didn’t get it. It was like I was speaking in a foreign tongue.

When is it we get to that point in our lives where we have the sudden (hard) realization that we are just that much older and not as cool? I’m not talking about saying words like gasoline, Sears & Roebuck and slacks, but that we just don’t have all the “right” words at just the right moment. We dance like we remember Uncle Don did at all those family weddings – freely but still, uncomfortably. When we go out with our closest friends who are a decade younger, people ask, “Is that your daughter?”

All those same, younger girlfriends see you as a “mentor,” someone with “so much experience” they can learn from, which is strange. You thought, the reason they wanted to hang out was because you were fun, not because you had anything to offer.

Walking through Midtown New York City a few Sundays ago en route to judge a handbag contest, I mused on all the times I’d walked alone in the city and how it never gets old. Being alone in a city, the possibilities are endless to just fade away and be someone else. It brings to mind a quote permanently tattooed in my head by British explorer and travel writer Freya Stark who once said: “To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.”

Pleasant and full of anonymity.

I use enough expensive organic beauty products to look younger than I am, so who knows I’m not one of those edgy friends 10 years my junior? Especially with sunglasses on. Who is really to know I like listening to Simon & Garfunkel and eat goat cheese and beet salads? For all they know, I’m “that badass chic in that band, you know the one, that’s her isn’t it?”

If we are to define what this edginess means – if we even care at all – then I’m going to have to go with the line of thought that says what is cool is what is not.

There’s always going to be band I know and have hung out on a tour bus with that earlobe dude has not, there’s always going to be that food I ate with the Bedouins in Africa that my friend hasn’t (yet), and of course there’s the fact that I’m not creepy. Never will be. Unless I try being something I’m not.

And that CD with Art Garfunkel sporting a blonde afro? If I told you it reminded me of driving through the canyons in New Mexico with wrapped sage on my dash and carved animal totems, that it reminds me of some of the sweetest moments of my life adventuring alone with my dad’s old camera to take pictures of cliff dwellings and ruins, then maybe I’ve just convinced myself that getting older doesn’t make you creepy at all – it just makes you edgier from all the experience.

Image: Psylight

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In 2009 alone, 4.2 million Americans turned 30. And while some of the latest additions to the fourth decade of living may not be happy to be there, others are diving into their 30s with optimism. When I turned 30, I threw a party at a bar that no longer exists on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood. Was I any wiser the next morning? No, but almost a decade later I can look back as a serene auntie. Okay, not really, but check out what some of our comrades had to say about why it’s great to turn 30.

“Everyone wants to be 30.” Journalist Gail Sheehy calls 30 “The Golden Age.” As CBS reports, Sheehy asserts “Everybody wants to be 30. 50-year-olds say 50 is the new 30. 40-year-olds are saying 40 is the new 30. And interestingly when I interview people in the mid-40s, in their 50s and ask, how do you feel inside? They almost always say 30.”

Your 20s are over. In your 20s, you’re young, you’re healthy, and you’ve got a skin tone that can’t be beat. But it’s also a time for actions that may have you smacking your forehead with a “what was I thinking?” for years. Which is why turning 30 can be a great time to put that all behind you (under lock and key, buried under a moonless night) and look forward to a decade of smarter choices.

I asked Marshall Herskovitz, cultural god of the thirtysomething decade, his opinion on turning 30. Marshall is co-creator and executive producer of the iconic TV series Thirtysomething. As Marshall told me, “Turning 30 serves one good function only, and that’s getting you out of your crappy twenties, a decade in which you didn’t get nearly the respect, success, sex, or money you thought you were supposed to…”

Been there, done that. Fashion changes for some in their 30s. No, we’re not saying skip the latest looks because you’re too aged to pull off jeggings. But some feel that fashion in your 30s is more about knowing who you are and what you want. As 39-year-old Chicago banker Amy Hoffman told me, “I thought one of the liberating things about turning 30 was you no longer felt the need to follow every fashion trend. There’s more I think I’ll sit this one out or better yet, I already did that in the 80s.”

It’s a reality check. Aysia Wright, co-founder Project Green Search and aged 36, found herself asking at 30: “What am I doing with my life? Am I being true to myself?” Because so many people hold up the age as a marker, it’s a positive time when people can take a moment to check in and get oriented in the right direction.

It’s a good time for mommies. Andrea Schmieg is 38-year-old physician in Virginia and a mother of three. When I asked her the best reason to turn 30, she shared simply: “kids.” We sure don’t advocate panicking over a biological clock because you’re three decades in. But it is nice to note that since you’re often self-assured in your 30s, it makes parenthood all the more powerful.

Milestones, schmilestones. By the age of 30, you see for the first time how hard life can be for people who feel they aren’t hitting their milestones. It doesn’t matter if you’re settling down or not, having babies or not, or hitting your career goals or not. It just matters that you are on the right path. The right destination really is all about how you get there. I know I sound like I’m in a serene, meditation pose while writing this, but it is true. (I wish I could be that limber.)

Your most common way to die is by accident. You’re as healthy as you’re ever going to be at age 30. So drink (moderately) to good health!

Your career goals may be firmly set. Via 11points.com, “the average person has had 7.5 jobs by 30, and you’ll have 2.4 more by age 35.” Okay, so that’s a lot of jobs. I had two jobs by the time I was 30. Both of them involved a variation of what I am now — a full-time writer. By the age of 30, you are most likely going to have a good idea of what you want in terms of a career. And odds are that you are heading in the right direction.

Getting carded becomes fun. Age isn’t supposed to matter, right? And we’re not supposed to care about fine lines, wrinkles, and the odd ache and pain creeping up, right? Well, some of us do. So if our day is just a little brighter because someone refused to sell us a bottle of supermarket red wine, then so be it. Let the cardings continue!

It really does keep getting better. Sometimes, it seems that we can get hit with one huge emotional life event after another. And for many, this can happen right around 30. Grandparents pass away, childhood homes are sold, and relationships can end in spectacularly bad ways. (As may be the problems when you are healthy and operate of your own free will.) But then you settle into life with a little more experience under your belt and a boatload of perspective. And what does that mean? A smoother road into your 40s and beyond.

Photos: Sleepishly, titlap, a4gpa

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