I’m in my 30s and the most interesting change isn’t what I started doing. It’s something I’ve stopped caring about.
Not in any dramatic sense. I didn’t sit down and make a list. Things just slowly spiral out of control, like some of the songs you used to love stop appearing in your rotation. You do not decide to end them. One day you notice they are gone.
Here are six of them.
Being right in small arguments
When I was younger, I had a strong need to be right. Especially in conversations with my brothers, with old friends, with everyone close to me, to push back. I would dig. I would find an angle. I would like the other person to accept my point of view, ideally admitting that I was right all along.
These days I notice that the desire comes and then sort of disappears.
It’s not that I’ve become wise about it. I’ve watched these arguments end the same way. Either they both quietly dropped it, or someone said something they regret. Either way, the relationship is a bit worse, and the stakes are not the truth. Usually I would just defend my version that had to be right.
If I let it go, I don’t lose anything. The conversation becomes a little easier. My wife and I argue less.
Do I keep up with other people my age?
A few years ago, I saw someone my age who was buying a house, selling a company, running a marathon, writing a book, and experiencing what I now recognize as mild panic. It was as if I was behind in a race I hadn’t registered for.
I really don’t feel it anymore.
Some of them have been running our business with my brothers long enough to know that other people’s schedules have nothing to do with mine. Some of them are having a young daughter who is not interested in any of this. Some of them are just getting old. You watch enough people reach a milestone that they think will change everything, and then a month later go back to the same day-to-day mindset, and the whole frame starts to feel thin.
There is no pace. There is only what you really do today.
Having an informed opinion about everything in the news
News is what I’m most proud to release.
For most of my 20s and early 30s, I felt some sort of obligation to be informed about everything. Technology, markets, politics, cultural arguments of the week. In the morning, he read the headlines, took a position, fleetingly orientated himself in the world.
Most of it I lost interest in, not because the news didn’t matter, but because I noticed how rarely those opinions changed anything I did. I worried about something I had no control over, spent the day distracted, and didn’t think about it again for a year. It was just a burden I volunteered to carry.
I’m still reading. I just don’t feel like I owe it to the world to watch everything anymore. Most of the time, I’d rather know one thing well than have a half-formed view of twenty.
Looks productive
For a long time, I confused busyness with usefulness. I had a packed calendar, a long to-do list, and little sense of virtue about how much I was getting done.
What I actually finished was often less than what I do now in half an hour.
What I stopped being interested in was the appearance of the work. The performance of it. The need to appear as someone who is always in touch. When I’m with my daughter, I’m with my daughter. When I work, I work for long, leisurely stretches and then stop. When I run along the river bank in the morning, my phone stays at home.
It’s a more peaceful life than the one I lived in my thirties. It also produces more.
A friendship I maintained out of guilt
It took longer to admit it.
There are people I’ve known for years that I felt I needed to keep in touch with. Some good people. Some I just had a lot of history with. In any case, when I noticed how little I actually expected the next catch up, I started to back off.
Not in a cold way. I would still answer. I would see them again if they were in town. I stopped initiating to keep my membership on life support.
It turns out that many friendships have a natural lifespan, and stretching them out over many years is basically a form of pretending. The friendships that I still invest real time in are the ones that make me feel more like myself afterward. They are less than I previously thought I needed.
What do people who barely know me think about me
This is what surprised me the most.
In my 20s, I was constantly attuned to how I was perceived. From people on the internet, from people I once met, from people whose opinion of me would not affect my life in any way. I would replay small interactions in my head. I would worry about what someone would think if I said the wrong thing at dinner.
Now I mostly don’t notice.
This is not a certainty at all. I think it’s just that I gradually realized who I’m really accountable to. My wife. My daughter. My brothers. A small handful of friends. Several colleagues whose work I respect. This list is shorter than I once thought, and the rest of the world’s view of me is honestly not something I have access to anyway.
None of this follows from the decision. I was not old enough to choose what to record. They were just quiet by themselves.
I expect there will be more in my 40s.
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