Blog Tired

Farewell to my 20’s

A comparison I'll no doubt regret making

After nearly three full decades in youth’s exile, I’ve been discovered. I will emerge tomorrow morning from a camouflaged hideaway with my hands in the air and tell the authorities ‘I am Jimi Odell, and my time is up’. As I am handcuffed, blindfolded, and led away, I will already know I have been defeated. I shall put up no resistance.

Feeling groggy and tired, I won’t remember much about the trial. The court records will show that I pleaded guilty to a mis-spent youth although I won’t be able to pin down any concrete memory of that. Following a brief trial during which my lawyer says very little, I will be given a life sentence and set free to roam the earth, tutting at those foolish 20-somethings who think they can get away with anything.

The roaring 20's - not to scale

And so now I am 30, I can’t help but look back over my 20’s and wonder if they met my expectations. I had of course assumed that they would closely resemble the sitcom Friends – a spacious living room, a series of week-long relationships, and the occasional life lesson picked apart over a giant cup of coffee… in the end though, I was closer to the sitcom Spaced – zig-zagging conversations about crappy jobs, hazy afternoons of tea and weed, shouting for missing pets on Hampstead Heath, and a constant nagging fear that struggling to make it as an artist won’t pay the bills.

So, has anything changed? Not really, but it’s kind of a load off – all those bullshit ‘by the time I’m 30′ yardsticks can drift away as I relax into my life, achieving what I achieve as and when I achieve it – and I’m getting better and better at achieving all the time (i before e except after c?). It’s all good. I actually don’t know what the fuss is about.

Actual wedding

A little over a week ago, I got married… that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing during my blogular absence. Making that happen, then doing it, then recovering from all the making and doing – I’ve been having a really good time. And now I’m here, married, 30 years old, a proper, actual man, I admit that I really do feel different. And, without wanting to get too sentimental, my marriage to the coolest person I have ever met is far more of a milestone than any age-number could ever represent. Thirty schmirty, I’m a husband. I can not even hope to express in words how surreal (and awesome) that feels, and how surprised I am at how surreal it feels (the awesomeness, I expected). We still live in the same house, we still feed the same cat, we’re still share the same laughs, yet somehow something significant is changed. Maybe it’s the new toaster. Yesterday, I answered the phone to the man from the insurance company and when I heard myself saying ‘This is her husband, can I take a message?’, I nearly laughed out loud. I guess the best way to explain it is that the adventure I already knew I was on just hit the point of no return and I got butterflies.

Anyway… it’s now less than half an hour until I’m officially thirty, and I need to publish this before it becomes anachronistic. Thanks for reading and I promise that my next blog will be ridiculous and far less personal. Look forward to it.

This coming from a foolish twenty-something who already thinks he knows better…