Damn Near 30
With age comes wisdom ... perspective ... a new column

By Jill M. Revelle

I won't lie to you: I was trolling. The smoky eyes, the come-hither pout of lip gloss, the hair tousled in that "yes, I roll out of bed looking like a centerfold" careless way that takes a very precise combination of hairdryer, flat-iron, two sizes of brushes and three brands of product -- all of it in a calculated effort to turn a few heads last Friday night.

In the ongoing search for Mr. Right, sometimes you have to settle for Mr. Let Me Buy You A Beer And Tell You Your Butt Looks Great In Those Jeans.

When I first saw him, he was dancing with the kind of easy grace that comes from a little natural rhythm and a lot of Jagermeister. He looked, and I caught him looking. I smiled, and he smiled back as he charted a course for the bathroom. And when he came back out, I was within easy reach.

I didn't say it was romantic. I just said it worked.

And as we danced together -- much closer than the musical stylings of the marginally talented cover band would dictate -- I buried my face in his neck and breathed in the mingled scents of trendy cologne and beer-tinged sweat, of cigarette smoke and soap, of hope and anticipation and ... youth.

What's that you say, Mrs. Robinson?

He was 25 -- a grad student at the local university -- and swore that he would have guessed I was "only about his age." Mathematically (and depending on the generosity of your definition of "about"), he would almost be right.

But that's the tricky part about these sticky years between the happy-go-lucky post-collegiate grace period of 25 and full-fledged, lead-heavy adulthood. Like some sort of dog-years time warp, each birthday drags you farther and farther away from that time when it's still OK not to know where your life is headed, where it's still permissible to be a starry-eyed idealist and when, just sometimes, it's all right to show up to work in the same clothes you wore out the night before.

When I was 25, I was the poster child for the quarterlife crisis: a few years out of school, entry-level job at a daily newspaper, single, broke, disillusioned and wondering where was the perfect job, perfect husband, perfect life the kid me had always envisioned for adult me.

Because it was cheaper than therapy, I started writing a column for the paper called "The Quarterlifer." Each week, I dished Sex and the City style on friends, family, relationships, current events -- anything and everything from "right-hand rings" and Match.com to indecent proposals and getting dumped gracefully.

But a lot has changed in the past four years. I've moved on to a high-pressure public relations job with a big corporate machine. I've acquired a mortgage and a 401k. I've moved one kitten closer to becoming "that crazy cat lady next door."

And in three days, I will celebrate the last birthday I ever intend to acknowledge. By this time next week, I will officially be Damn Near 30.

But a couple of things haven't changed since I last started spilling my guts to the general public: I'm still single. There's still enough fodder in my circle of friends for a whole shelf of self-help books. And writing is still cheaper than therapy.
I don't know how many of my former faithful readers will remember me, but I'm grateful to the kind folks at HATCH Magazine for giving this aging quarterlifer the chance to talk to a new audience.

I can't promise it's going to change your life, but I can promise some laughs, a good cry now and then, and at least the occasional reason to stop and think.

I can also promise that if you email me, I will read it, and I will answer. And depending on what you write -- as was the case with one faithful reader who invited The Quarterlifer to spend a weekend with him at a nudist colony -- it WILL end up in print.

If I'm headed over the hill, I'm taking all of you with me.

Jill M. Revelle, who is clinging tenaciously to both youth and the occasional frat boy, can be reached at Damn_Near_30@yahoo.com.