pondering age

mrtris asked me if i were upset about turning 30. it's a difficult question, really, and i'm not quite sure i know the answer. it makes me think of my alternate universe boyfriend experience.

shortly after i found out i would be moving to california, a very nice, very smart, very funny, very cute man (with a lovely accent) asked me out in ithaca. i met him when noam and i were dating because he is in math as well, and while i thought at the time that he was all of the above, of course i wasn't looking. we ran into each other several times that last spring, but i didn't make any moves because i was about to move here, so what would be the point? (other than fooling around with someone fun, smart, gorgeous etc for a while, which, oops, should have thought of that!). but of course he didn't know about the move, so he asked me out-we went when i came back from apartment hunting, and it was wonderful. we had a great time, we flirted, it was the kind of date where you know there will be more to follow- only of course there weren't. it was like looking through a window into the life i would have had if i had stayed at cornell-live in my house, study bones, date him. it would have been a nice life, i would really have enjoyed it- but that's not the life i'm living. and i love my life now- i love living here and studying here and dating mrtris, and i wouldn't change all of that. but i wonder what that other life would have been like- would we have been serious or would we only have gone out a few times? would i have changed my study topic or would i be stuck with the bones? what would i have been doing differently?

and this birthday is kind of like that. if things had gone according to my high school plan, i would have been teaching for the last three years, well on my way to getting tenure. and i have had some incredible experiences and met some incredible people, and i would have gone through a much less prestigious program and studied much more prosaic archaeology if i had gone that route, so i certainly don't want to go back and change it, but i kind of want to know what it would have been like. it would be kind of nice to go and live that life for a day!

so i guess i'm not upset so much as inspired to think. i don't feel old (as covered a couple of posts ago), and i'm not unhappy about where i am in my life, i'm just- curious. and a little bummed out about the prospect of so much more grad school. it would be so nice to have a real income finally, and be able to not live in student squalor!