Blogging from a café on a Saturday night.

Doesn’t make much sense, unless you understand the entire story. It’s the one that starts when you realize that you just turned thirty and that it is a turning point. I don’t believe in numbers, but life is proving my doubt to be absolutely founded. The first indication was that my body is no longer that what it used to be. It takes a lot longer to recover from injuries, to get back into shape and regain energy. It just takes time.
On the other hand I have learned to be patient. This does not necessarily include tolerance, but definitely patience. You just do things at a slower pace and don’t expect results immediately. The compromise I don’t accept, and which I think is not necessary, is that things have to change. They don’t change direction just intensity. It is we that change direction.
So on a Saturday night, having spent the day doing just about nothing concrete, I realize that I is SATURDAY. This is the free time/night that I have, as do all other thirty-year-olds. So what do I do? I wonder. I wonder whether there will be the last minute phone call that will take me to a night of hedonism, socializing, probably mixed with some legal vice. I pack up and head out – in the opposite direction. Instead of going downtown (which is altitudinally actually up), I head down to the river. The fog has been in for the past three days. It’s cold and empty. And the river is there. It’s wide and dark, and I know that there is nothing on the other bank. It might as well be the end of the world. Silence and yellow streetlights.
An hour later I’ve made my way downtown (up). I’ve spent an hour in silence, observing the world around me. It’s a nice way to spend time. The hammer strikes when I recall that its Saturday. No one called. I didn’t call anyone. I’m thirty. It’s not a number, it’s a period. I continue to defy “expectations”, and many things in my life allow me to do so. But at the end of the day, I don’t live alone, nor do I long to do so. We (my generation) are “growing up”, but I don’t think we realize what that necessarily implies and what we choose to change by ourselves. It’s been a long time since I felt peer pressure. It’s no longer direct, no one cares what I wear, but if I want to do things with other people, I can’t expect them to follow my lead. I live differently. And then because I’m doing life differently, I end up blogging from a café on a Saturday night.