Kristin Rides

I felt old for the first time ever today. I received my new 2010 OBRA membership card in the mail with my upcoming age printed in big black letters:

RACING AGE: 27

Gulp.

Thank you OBRA, I’m officially going through a pre-mid-life crisis.

I’ve been in a strange head space lately, pretty much driving myself batty over-thinking everything, from relationships to my own neurosis to my career, but at the same time finally uncovering some issues and emotions I’ve been burying. Through all this navel-gazing, I’m beginning to realize that “too young” doesn’t really fly anymore when applies to certain life events. For instance, just about every one of my friends from highschool are married or engaged, and with children or about to be. When I’ve mentioned this before, it’s coming from that WTF frame of mind–like “wow, we’re so young, that’s just crazy!”

For some reason 27 is an invisible threshold in my head where suddenly its not so crazy anymore.

I’m beginning to wonder what’s wrong with me–all I want to do is ride bikes and play in the dirt and snow. I don’t want to climb any corporate ladders or buy a house or pop out any babies. I feel like I’m having all the fun now that I never had as a kid. I was always so serious–I just wanted childhood to hurry up and get over with so I could get to the good part.

Funny, because here I am in the good part and I all I want to do is play like a kid.

But I have to admit, The Clock is a-tickin’, and it’s funny how hard it is to admit that to myself. I never wanted children, I was always insanely adamant about that until recently. But sweet jesus not now, at some point in the distant future. The problem is that the future is rapidly becoming less distant.

Turning 27 is so scary because I remember when I was younger thinking that I would definitely be married by 27. Like that would be the magical year, I mean it’s just so damn old. Hmmm…yeah…I take it back! I take it back!

I’m standing at some sort of brink, in the aftermath of The Year That Will Live In Infamy. I need to think about The Future, because I’ve been flying by the seat of my pants for a while now, and I’m not sure how long this MacGyver-ed contraption is going to stay in the air. I can hear many of you saying now 27 is not old (I’m allowed to feel old), and also Why are you suddenly worried about living up to society’s expectations/There’s nothing wrong with you/People change their careers and lives all the time that has nothing to do with age etc etc…

It’s not that. I feel like I’m floating right now, which is fine, for now. But I need something to hang on to, be that some sort of long term career goal or personal goal or something else. I need an anchor.

The problem with setting up these long terms goals is that I have to start thinking about what’s important to me. I mean what’s really important. And in the end I always circle back to people. Family and friends. While being creative, being outside, being driven, and sweet jumps are all also important to me, what good are they if you don’t have anyone to share them with? Someone’s gotta be there when you land that jump, whether it be to give you a “hell yeah”, take a picture, or drive you to the emergency room. When I think about my true passions and what gets me really jazzed and excited, I think about sharing those passions with other people. For some time I’ve been trying to come up with a job that encompasses that; the only thing I came up with was being some kind of a tour guide, but that’s not exactly a lucrative or likely proposition. I also think about writing, but I’d rather not turn that into my source of income.

And then I realized it: teaching. Duh. I’ve never taught anyone much of anything. In fact, I wonder if I’d be a very good teacher at all, since I often need things explained to me a million times. I’m going to start volunteering somewhere to see how I feel about it; I’m not sure I would want to do it full time, but I would like to give it a shot. The fact is that I do also get passionate about design (what I actually do for a living), but I admit that not really knowing what’s around the corner in six months gets a bit stressful at times. At the same time I’m not sure I’m ready to commit to an office full time. That would certainly be easier, but when have I ever settled for that?