So, last week I turned 32.  Not a landmark or signpost age, not a “does it feel different now that you’re _____?” age, just an in-between age, a marking-time age.  But as birthdays often do, freighted with symbolism as they are, it got me thinking about stuff, almost in a stereotypical “aging=melancholy” kinda way....

I know how lucky I am, to be celebrating almost eight years of marriage to my best friend, to be able to be a stay-at-home parent to our beautiful, bright miracle of a daughter.  I have good friends around me, I am close, literally and figuratively, to family who love me.  And yet....

I think about what friends of mine, or even bloggers I read who I don’t even know, have experienced or accomplished, younger, older, same age as me.  Writers, artists, activists, professionals, work-at-home-parents balancing family with meaningful work, or people who’ve packed in a bunch of difference life and work experiences into the same number of years since school.  People doing what they always talked about doing.

What do you do with your life when the one job you dreamed of for years turns out to be just the totally wrong fit?  I wanted to be a teacher in public schools since high school.  To echo the cliché, yes, “I wanted to make a difference.”  There, I said it.  In my late 20s, I finally ended up in a classroom, and discovered, to my horror, that whatever “it” was, I didn’t have it, couldn’t do it.  I tell myself that I didn’t go in naive and overly idealistic, that I knew the score, knew how hard it was gonna be.  But I wasn’t prepared to discover that, after all those years of dreaming, I just couldn’t do it.  I don’t wanna go into a postmortem here, suffice it to say that by the time we moved to Bakersfield, after a couple years do what I thought I’d spend my life doing, I was ready for a “sabbatical.”

At least, that was what I was calling it.  ‘Cause after all that, all the personal, philosophical, political and ideological commitment to public education, to teaching urban kids of color, to enacting multiculturalism and social justice in the classroom, I couldn’t admit to myself that I had failed.  That after promising myself that I wouldn’t become another statistic, one of the “half” or “three quarters” or whatever of “new teachers” who “leave the profession in their first five years,” that that was exactly what I was.  Because now,the hard questions come.

What happened?

Why’d I fail?

And most frightening of all:

Now what?

What the fuck do I do now?

All of this is not to discount in any way how much I love being able to be at home for my babygirl, especially at this young age.  But I look around, at friends, at college classmates, even random bloggers I read on the internet, and I can’t help but compare myself.

I’m 32.  My real-world work experience boils down to a couple years teaching.  I look at the non-profit sector, where people who care about education, youth, diversity, social justice seem to be doing good works, and I wonder how to even begin, with barely any experience.  Not to mention the fact that that kind of non-profit sector is barely in existence where I live currently.

I’m 32.  I look around and see people my age and younger writing and publishing novels, non-fiction, starting magazines....  I run into people from high school and college, and they ask me, “Are you still writing?”  And I have to apologetically say no.  Somehow, they remember this guy who was gonna write “the Great [Multiracial Asian] American Novel,” as they say, and I wonder, what happened to him?  Did he ever really exist?

Okay, I’m looking this crap over and thinking that I’m getting really morose and self-pitying and I probably shouldn’t even publish this, but it’s late, and I haven’t posted in a while, and anyway, it’s what I’ve been thinking, at least part of me, part of the time, so why not?

Because, yeah, I’m 32.  My life is not over.  I’m writing again, thanks to this blogging thing, more frequently than I ever did before, even after reading Ray Bradbury’s admonishment to write every day in college.  That’s something, isn’t it?  I’m still volunteering on issues that I care about, finding other people in the real world and in cyberspace to connect with over issues and experiences that matter to me.  Fatherhood has opened up a whole new world for me, given me a new lens through which to view all my old causes, refreshed them, made them more immediate, more real.

I’m 32.  I am a father, a son, a husband, a lover, a friend, a partner.  None of these roles are easy, all are full-time jobs, and all take work and commitment.  And the other stuff?  I just have to tell myself, like you’re told by your mom growing up, don’t compare yourself to others, just compare yourself to you.

And if you don’t like what you see, don’t mope.  Don’t get depressed, or jealous, or frustrated.

Do something about it.

I guess, in the end, reminding myself of that, that’s my birthday present—to my family, and to myself.