Today's Track : Metric - Down

My birthday is approaching this weekend and for the first time in years I’m not having a Dorian Gray complex about it. I’m not in the least bit annoyed that I’m yet another year older and yet another year behind what people my age should be doing. And what is it that we should be doing at the tender age of 28? I suppose signing over our lives to our mortgage; our wives; our jobs. I have three friends already who have purchased houses/condos in the last year or two. I had four friends get married last year. Three friends are getting married this year and two more are recently engaged and set to be married next year (congratulations Karen/Hyun and Arthur/Flo). I’d say 90% of my friends work too much and get paid too little but then again that’s probably what the majority of the population would say as well.

Akiko posted a blog recently about life getting serious all of a sudden. I think we all knew this day would come and we all wondered about it as kids but never really understood the significance and impact this moment would have in our lives. Twenty plus years of being groomed to be responsible for ourselves. (God I hate that word. I really do.) So now we own our own objects of debt. We no longer speak as a single selfish child. We no longer have time to just hang out with our friends. We’re too busy working, balancing our budgets, planning out a family and purchasing more objects of debt. Is this what our parents were preparing us for? Seems a bit daunting doesn' it?

So up until now I’ve barricaded myself in my parent’s home in protest. I’ve refused to purchase any objects of debt until my largest object of debt – my student loan – has been paid off. I work for a company but I’ve refused to let the company work me. I've been scared as hell of the real world.

All this is about to change though. I can feel the winds of change blowing over top of my little utopia. I’ve started working on a budget. I’ve already invested money in some stocks. I’m working on a retirement savings plan. Sometime in the next few weeks I’ll be purchasing my own car. In the two or three years I’ll be moving out on my own and looking to settle down and plan a family.

I’m not worried anymore. Responsibility no longer scares me. I now have the ability to either crash this ship into the rocks or land this ship on some new undiscovered land.

March 21st I turn 28 and it’ll mark the beginning of my independence.