I dashed to the room where my smartphone was blaring a sitar ringtone, and pressed the red button, happy that I’d managed to locate the device before voice mail picked up. Well, I was happy until I realized I’d hung up on the caller, which is what the red button does, which you’d think I would know after having had the phone for three months.

So I opened the call log and returned the call to hear my brother’s voice on the line saying, “Hello?…..Hello?…..Is anyone there?” as I filled in the ellipsis with my own responses that he couldn’t hear with my mute button on. I figured out how to unmute the phone, but only after he hung up. So I tried calling him back again only to get a confused, Spanish-speaking person on the other end of the line, who I knew was not my brother because my brother took German in high school, not Spanish.

Then, finally, I managed to call my brother back at the proper number with the mute setting off, and started to have a conversation with him. But the first words out of my mouth were, “Oh God, this is what it’s like to be Mom.” I love my mother dearly (Hi, Mom!), and she’s the first person I’d ask to sew a hem or bake a lasagna, but she is also the first person who’d acknowledge that her skills with electronics are nothing to envy. I usually take on the role as her tech support, hooking up her TiVo and configuring her wireless phones. I speak gadget and she does not.

Until now. Because I must admit that I still screw up many basic operations on my smartphone, usually when I’m under the pressure of an incoming call, ring, ring, RINGING, away. I don’t do well under a time limit. I am not as fluent in smartphone as I am in DVR or HTML (and now they’re developing HTML5, so I can be not as fluent in that too).

So, less than a week before my birthday today, I realized it—I really am turning 30. As if by official decree, now is the moment when I start to lose my ability to operate electronics and slowly slip into the persona of an old person who wouldn’t be able to stop the VCR clock from flashing if VCRs still existed.

I am thirty years old today, and I’m not old, but I’m not young.

I remember when music came on cassette tapes. I remember when the phrase “world wide web” would have referred to an alien invasion of gigantic spider monsters, not this Internet thingamajig. I remember when a familiar actor appeared on a television show and I’d have to rack my brain for weeks until I spontaneously recalled a part he’d played, instead of just going to the IMDB. I remember when my elementary school teachers would ask me what I was going to be when I grew up, and the correct answer did not yet exist because neither did the Internet. I remember slap bracelets, and jelly shoes, and She-Ra. I remember when the year 2000 seemed far off and was a possible harbinger of the apocalypse.

I am thirty years old today, and I live in the future.

If I were to stand on my personal timeline and wave back at the person I used to be, she would be amazed by everything we have now. My smartphone is more complex than Captain Kirk’s communicator which didn’t do video. I have talked to people in France and Chile on the Internet for free. I can order almost anything I want online without leaving my apartment. I can work without leaving my apartment. I think it’s so strange that kids born today will take all these things for granted, just like I can’t imagine a world without microwaves, televisions, and telephones. A kid born today will view me in the same way as I view someone who was born in 1950. I remember when I thought someone who was born in the 60′s was from a distant era of time where whites and coloreds didn’t drink from the same water fountains, but in retrospect wasn’t that much earlier from when I was born. I remember feeling left out because I didn’t have a story for where I was when Kennedy was shot, and I remember wishing I still felt left out after September 11, 2001.

I remember hearing someone say, “Never trust someone over the age of thirty.” I’m not entirely sure what they meant, but I remember thinking that thirty was the age where people stopped trying to change to world to suit themselves and started changing themselves to suit the world instead. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I do know that 30 is the first birthday when you start getting cards joking about how old you are.

The reality of aging is that more and more of your life exists in the past, and less of it in the future. You convert all your potential tomorrows into a string of yesterdays. You have to concede that eventually your life will consist of only yesterdays and no tomorrows. I can’t say for sure how far along I am on my personal timeline, but hopefully I’m less than halfway done, and even more hopefully less than a third of the way to the end. (Mental note: Exercise more! Eat healthier! Wear sunscreen!)

There are lots of landmarks on my personal timeline. May 1998 was when I graduated from high school. October 2002 was when my dad left. November 2003 was when I had my gallbladder removed. I suppose thirty is just another landmark on my timeline that’s only given significance because of our base-10 numbering system. Sort of random and determined by the speed of the earth’s journey around the sun.

It’s a time to look to the past I’ve had and then look to the future I want and try to figure out how to join those points together. Regardless of what it was or wasn’t, I look back on the past 30 years and think, I’m good with that. Sure, I could have been more outgoing in college, or lost more weight before I got so fat, or parked my brother’s car in a space where it wouldn’t get hit by a drunken, hit-and-run driver while my bro was studying abroad in Italy. But all in all, it’s been pretty sweet, even with my never-ending headache. I don’t have many complaints.

So now I’m looking ahead to the next thirty years and trying to decide what I want to do next. What do I want to achieve? Who do I want to meet? Where do I want to go? And I think I should probably spend less time thinking and thinking myself in circles in my head and just try something whether I succeed or fail. Just do it. Go! Live!

So, I am thirty today and here I am, traveling somewhere between the future and the past, exchanging one for the other like dollars to euros. I’ve still got my She-ra action figures even if I lost my slap bracelet. I’m keeping my smartphone even if I accidentally call back the pizza delivery guy again. But it’s good to take a break, look around and appreciate the journey, to see where I’ve been and look forward to where I’ve still yet to go.

I just hope that when I’m 60, you youngins will teach Granny PastaQueen how to answer the phone.

I have been freelancing fulltime for 10 months now, and I ain’t broke yet! Working for myself has been fun/exciting/freeing and stressful/boring/frightening. Regardless of what adjectives you use, it has also required math skills and free wifi.

I have learned how to prepare estimates, to charge what I’m worth, and to keep detailed records. I bring up work at any dinner out so I can write the meal off on my taxes. I’ve overcome my telephone anxiety (for the most part), run a meeting all by myself, and I’ve pitched my business in ten seconds or less at networking events.

I still haven’t figured out a long-term health insurance solution, and sometimes I get lonely or bored and don’t work as hard as I know I should. But I also get to shop for groceries in the middle of the day in my flip flops. And I can jet down to Louisville to meet friends on a weekday without having to ask anyone’s permission to do so. It balances out.

Overall it has been a great decision, the right decision, and a decision I’m proud I was brave enough to make. However, it has also induced a minor personal crisis. Once you realize you are free to do anything with your life, it becomes pretty damn overwhelming to figure out what to do with your life. I feel like I’m reading a menu with a thousand entrees and I’m paralyzed, not knowing what to order.

When I was working for THE MAN, I would often sit at work wishing I were not at work. And when I wasn’t at work, I was often too exhausted from work to do the things I’d wished I was doing when I was at work. It was easy to think that if I had complete control over my life, this paradoxical problem would be solved. However, now that I call all the shots, I’ve found that this isn’t so. I still have moments when I glare at my computer, frustrated by a Javascript bug. Some days I feel unmotivated to complete jobs which I have chosen to take on. I am happy for a greater percentage of the time, but I’m not happy 100% of the time. Except now there is no corporate headquarters to damn, no misguided leadership to bash, and no one to blame for anything but myself.

The Buddhist dieting book, “Savor,” which I recently reviewed, said that many people are carried through life by their “habit energy,” like a rider on a runaway horse. I’ve certainly felt trapped by the force of my habit energy at times, which might manifest itself as a job or a relationship or another element in my life. But it can also be comforting to be trapped, because you don’t feel the weight of responsibility that comes when you have to make choices. Sometimes the best thing about a mindless job is that it’s mindless. If you’re not in control, nothing is your fault.

So, here I am, ten months later, and I feel like I’ve already begun to slip into a new stream of habit energy. This time it is the habit of my self-employment. I wake up at 8:30, make coffee, eat oatmeal, and watch the end of Good Morning America. I push Java Bean out of the office and close the door. I check emails and figure out what I need to do today. I’ve become comfortable communicating with clients, keeping the books, and getting work done. For the first six months it was exciting and interesting and new, and now that it’s more comfortable, I can’t distract myself with it as much. I find myself asking, “OK, now what?”

I’ve always hated that question. “Now what?” I don’t know what! Stop asking! I KILL YOU! In high school, it was, “Where are you going to college?” In college it was, “What’s your major?” After college it was, “Do you have a job?” It just never ends. Once, I literally started hyperventilating when a friend asked me what I was planning to do after I graduated. One of the things I liked about my weight loss was that it gave me a project to focus on for two to three years. I killed time at work during the day, but all I really cared about was walking, cooking, and blogging about it. After the weight-loss, I made book writing my big project. And after the book writing I got a never-ending headache and had a bit of a breakdown, partly because of the pain and partly because I didn’t really have a project. I suppose visiting doctors could be considered a project, but it was a crap project, like a book report a teacher had assigned on a topic I hated. Then I got my shit back together (mostly), and made book writing and freelancing my projects.

And now…I am project-less again. I turned in my book manuscript in January, but it’s not due to be published until next year. I’m still blogging. I’m still freelancing. I have one or two ideas simmering on the stove. But I don’t really have a project I feel passionate about like I have at other times in my life. I miss that sense of forward motion. I miss feeling fired up about something. And I’m not really sure how to get that back. I guess you don’t go back, you go forward into something else. What? I dunno.

I’ve asked myself the old question, “If you could do anything without fear of failure, what would it be?” My answer is: Travel, meet interesting new people, and build a supportive community of friends. I’ve been traveling more this year, but I’d love to travel around the world. Sadly, that costs money I don’t actually have. So I’ve been turning that idea around in my head, thinking that if I were only a bit more clever I could figure out a way to make that happen without declaring bankruptcy or working a well-paying job I hate or abandoning my cats. So, that stands as a puzzle that I am still pondering, trying to fit the pieces together to make the picture I want. And even if I do get the picture I want, I might discover I don’t actually want it when I get it. Or I might want it for awhile and then need something else. Always something else.

I’ll be turning thirty in late October, and I’m quite proud of how far I’ve come this decade. It’s been the personal-growth equivalent of running an Iron Man. I used to literally stare at walls instead of chatting with people, but now I can make small talk and network like a socially competent individual. I used to be super-fat, and now I’m just sorta-fat. I could not fathom the possibility of running my own business when I was in college, and now I’m working for myself. It’s been good, but now I’ve got to figure out what to do with the next thirty(?), forty(?), fifty(?) years or more.

Any boredom I’m experiencing can probably be blamed on lack of imagination on my part. Sometimes I think, “Life has been good, but how am I ever going to fill the next few decades?” I know this is a stupid question because it is a big huge world and I’ve only seen an itty, bitty piece of it. There is enough stuff out there to fill a hundred lifetimes. There are over six billion people I could meet. But when you have that many possible choices, it can be hard to choose just one thing at a time. Sometimes it’s easier to blame a job.

I no longer have to breath deeply and grip the arm rests when the airplane takes off. I do not focus on the flight attendants as if they are explaining the meaning of life when they demonstrate how to put on the oxygen mask. I’ve traveled several times over the past two years and each trip has made me a little more confident and a little less uneasy to take to the skies.

However, I was a bit worried about that middle section of the flight path illustrated above on my most recent flight that crossed the vast Atlantic Ocean. When we took off from Paris, I could gaze out the window below to see ships skating across the water like toys in the bathtub. Then we coasted above the clouds and I was glad because I did not want to see the vast emptiness that would await us if something went wrong, knowing no one would be there to help us but ourselves.

So when Air France flight 447 disappeared and eventually the wreckage was found, I felt so sorry for the passengers and their families because I had feared the same might happen to me only two weeks earlier. I didn’t fear it enough to cancel my trip or take a long sea voyage instead, but I knew it was a remote possibility, just as I know I could die every time I buckle my seatbelt and drive to work. It makes me wonder, which picture of me would they have shown on TV? What would Brian Williams or Charlie Gibson or Katie Couric say about me in my brief two sentence obituary as my face flashed on the screen? Would they dig up archival video footage of me appearing on their morning shows? Would my book sales suddenly sky rocket? And even so, is having a best-selling book really worth dying for?

More importantly, what would I want them to say about me? I’m not sure, but it reminds me that you should not wait to start living the life you want to live. I don’t know how many tomorrows are in my future, but I hope they are all good ones.

The other 30% of me was glad I did not have to question every life decision I’ve made in the last 10 years, that I didn’t have to wonder what my life could have been like if I’d turned left instead of right, if I’d met a guy or had a baby, if I’d started a business or gotten another job. I’m pretty happy with my life, even with my headache and the recession and the toilet that seems to be breaking again. Yet, everyone can fall victim to that Virus of the Mind as Heather Nova put it. When faced with a decision between entering the past of my reunion or making future relationships with other bloggers, it was easy to chose the future.

I was also glad that I did not have to summarize the past 10 years of my life in a succinct format. Although I did not attend the reunion, I’m sure the most common question there that night was, “So what have you been up to?” I tried to think of what I would have said, which made me try to remember what was going on in my life when I graduated high school. I’ve come so far since then it’s like I’m on a different coast. But if I had to give summary of the landmarks along the way, I would say:

Got fat, got a cat, lost weight, left the state, wrote blog, wrote book, check me out on Facebook.

It’s less than 100 characters and it even rhymes! (I cheated by rhyming “book” with “Facebook,” so I’ll obviously never be the Poet Laureate.) If you had to describe the last 10 years of your life in 100 characters or less, what would you say? Let me know in the comments. You can check your answer’s length in the box below, but remember to actually post it in the comments area. And if you go over a little, I doubt anyone will care.