The Jazz Age

This is the last year of my eligibility for Young Blood. Next year, my twenties end.

Thirty is a milestone. Some of my peers are married with kids. I’m not even attached to anyone yet. Some have done the Europe and Asia trek. The farthest I’ve gone from home is Davao, which was great. It was a weeklong vacation with friends my age (and just over my age), all of us with well-developed caches for inward eye-rolling and table-flipping at the teasing we get about our age and its trimmings, from older cousins and well-meaning but tactless aunts.

My brain is currently nostalgic about my twenties, nudging me to write this all weekend, boot with spurs to my ass. Of course I ignored the boot, but I’m writing now.

I became a freethinker. Big transition for me: from devout to indignant. I’ve stopped being confused about it. It’s perfectly okay to live in THIS world rather than the next. Kindness is always okay. Equality is good. Happiness is good.

I worked my butt off for one short story. It got published and went on to be cited in a worldwide Year’s Best anthology. It got special mention in the Summary. Gavin Grant liked it. I had no idea who Gavin Grant was before he liked my story. He’s married to Kelly Link, and they’re both big in the speculative fiction genre. I thought it was Ellen Datlow, horror editor queen, who liked my story. I thanked her on my Livejournal and because of Google Alerts, she responded. Wow. I Livejournaled. I’m sad to report I wasn’t much of a journaler (journalist?). I cringe at some of what I’ve written there. I cringe at most of my writing since my little short story triumph. I got lazy. I got rejections.

I was planning to finish a novel and get it published by the time I was 26, just like Stephen King, but despite Scrivener and other writing apps, I finished nothing. I didn’t have enough focus and my inner editor had too much vitriol. I wrote fan fiction instead. Inner editor was appeased rather too easily by pleased reviewers. No regrets.

Learned a lot.

I discovered Subscene. Ooooh, gods bless these subtitlers who have made movies accessible to deaf people. I excused my lack of writing with not gathering input and inspiration. I read books and devoured movies. Movies I downloaded, not always legally. Blame the subtitlers for being enablers.

My deafness is now a friend. You know who my closest and dearest are because they’re the ones who can fingerspell. I wrote about it in a personal essay I submitted for the Palancas. “Dekada Silencia.” It didn’t win, but apparently, Prof. Luna Sicat-Cleto handed it out to her class. I was gobsmacked when I suddenly got Facebook messages from students of the University of the Philippines Diliman, sorta fangirling over my deaf ass. It was awesome.

I can say “ass” however many times I want, I’m almost 30.

I made new friends and ditched some old ones. People change, or their real self simply comes out—I was only initially blind to it because of the person’s novelty. But I’ve changed, too. My bullsh-t detector is more sensitive and less tolerant. No more novelty. I think this happens to all of us in our twenties. You get tired of people who don’t grow up, and you grow to love the irreverent and unpretentious, genuine about cluelessness despite being “old enough.”

I’ve gained my “real” weight. Your weight during your teens when you have no money for food and no job that makes exercise a bother (when you can relax with a movie and a vat of ice cream instead) is your fake weight, aka the weight you can’t believe you had and can’t attain again; give it up.

Oh, yeah, I got a job writing. Writing stopped being lonely when I earned money from it. Ahh, money! Sweet! And making my breakthrough by just sending pieces to editors? Just as sweet. Writing is like life. You have to be good at it. You get good by learning, and you learn by doing. You don’t have to be great. You just swing it without waiting for permission or being meek or tentative about it.

I’m glad I wrote this. Now I remember all the magazines carrying my byline that my twenties produced. Not that many magazines, but several issues. Not bad. Of course, Facebook killed my magazine gigs because publishing to Facebook costs virtually nothing.

But I moved on. One honorary aunt—hi, Tita Marj!—mentioned oDesk. I made my profile and got my first job on the same day. I asked for 25-percent upfront payment and got $9 instantly.

I wish I could have framed that—my first $9 of adulting. oDesk became Elance-oDesk and then Upwork. I’m still there. Still swinging. Still writing.

Just not for myself. I sign off work (or procrastinate), and just lie down and read Saki or binge-watch “Downton Abbey” or “Gilmore Girls” or anime. Afterward, I’m recharged. I never understood why people went to bars a lot in movies about working people. I understand it now. I don’t go to bars (there’s none nearby), but I have my own version of happy hour(s). My lazy ass is huge.

I’ve tried exercise. They’re like farts after I’ve laughed too much or ate something crunchy with my mouth open. Strong bursts that peter off, all gone. I trained for a 5k but didn’t last past the days when I was supposed to run for two minutes straight. I want to try the Zombies, Run! app but I wouldn’t hear it screaming or groaning at me. I’m going to try Diet Bet, though. Money!

Experts say our fitness peaks at early teens to late twenties. But I wrote about Chris Zaremba for one of my jobs. Google him. You and I have hope.

I’m only turning 30. Peaks are overrated. Sexual peaks. Fertility peaks. Fitness peaks. Anyone can summon peaks! Go super saiyan any time, any age. Sure, us women have biological clocks a-ticking, but so what? There’s always adoption.

I’m a writer and editor, I’m an INFJ (also mildly ENFJ), I love roller coasters, I love sharp dialogue in TV shows and movies (but I love my box-set of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers), I love Monopoly, I’m a book, shoe and purse hoarder, I’ve bought furniture, lightning is purple in the clouds, there are several layers of skin they cut through to get to the baby in a C-section, I can’t walk on sand without faceplanting or falling on my ass.

All that and more discovered, done, hoarded, seen in my twenties. I’m happy.

Maybe my thirties will have the noncheesy prenup photoshoot and the babies and the other milestones perceived by society. I’m not too bothered.

I do sorta want to get drunk in public before I’m 30, though. I think it’s embarrassing at over 30. I should be old enough to know better by then. I don’t know. That’s prejudiced thinking against over-thirties, isn’t it?

Joanna Paula Cailas, 29, content manager and contributor for various websites worldwide, as well as skilled scribbler, editor and beta-reader, says she recently discovered no-bake cheesecakes.