The Peter Pan Guide to Turning Thirty

All week, people have been asking me how it feels to be 30. My first answer was, "Much the same as 29, only it's a bit harder for people to patronise you on account of your youth!" (As James Wallbank pointed out, though, it's easier for them to say, "At your age, you really should have grown out of...")

Then I started to notice the difference. Perhaps it's all the other things going on around my life, but there's a sharpened sense that this is it: I'm never going to be a grown up, so it's time to get serious! (Or, as Andy put it to me, "We've avoided growing up for long enough, and now the rules have changed!")

With this, I was reminded of a passage from John Berger, which is ostensibly about the relationship between a painter and his subject, but which catches something larger about what might be called vocation:

How did you become what you visibly are? asks the painter.

I am as I am. I'm waiting, replies the mountain or the mouse or the child.

What for?

For you, if you abandon everything else.

For how long?

For as long as it takes.

There are other things in life.

Find them and be more normal.

And if I don't

I'll give you what I've given nobody else, but it's worthless, it's simply the answer to your useless question.

Useless?

I am as I am.

No promise more than that?

None. I can wait for ever.

I'd like a normal life.

Live it and don't count on me.

And if I do count on you?

Forget everything and in me you'll find -- me!

The collaboration which sometimes follows is seldom based on good will: more usually on desire, rage, fear, pity or longing. The modern illusion concerning painting (which post-modernism has done nothing to correct) is that the artist is a creator. Rather he is a receiver. What seems like creation is the act of giving form to what he has received.

John Berger, Steps Towards A Small Theory Of The Visible

(I'll be back in a day or two, when I have more time, to take up some of the threads from people's responses to recent posts. For now, though, thanks for turning my monologue into a conversation! It's far more sociable that way.)

Returning...

I hadn't planned to take a break from this blog, but one week stretched into another until I found I had stepped back from it (which was no bad thing). It has been a busy time! All kinds of things came to a head at once, as if to meet the deadline of my 30th birthday. Well, the day is upon me, and it seems a happy moment to return.

My main news is that I now have a place to live in London, after spending much of the past year living on Paul's sofa. I've been lucky to have such a tolerant business partner, but it is a huge relief to have a real bed - and to be reunited with my books! (And I'm sure the only person who's more relieved than me is Paul...) In practice, I will be spending about the same amount of my time in London (around 80% of it) as I have been doing for the past few months. But it will be good to have somewhere for Hannah to stay, so that she can visit me some weekends, instead of me returning to Sheffield.

Meanwhile, things have been moving fast in other areas of my life - including the School of Everything, where much is happening behind the scenes. (More news soon, in other words.) Through that, and through generally following my nose, I have met some amazing people recently. And, as I cross the threshold of this new decade, I'm feeling very lucky with my life.

So, this blog. Time out gave me the chance to pay attention to those blogs I read and enjoy, to think about what I've learned from them and from the experience of keeping my own. Writing matters to me: along with reading, spending time with people I care about, and growing stuff, it is one of the things I intend to do with myself for as long as I have any say in the matter. And for the immediate future, what writing time I get will continue to go into this blog.

My plan right now is to vary the rhythm a bit, to post more often, to be more active in directing people towards things that have caught my attention, and to let go of the habit of needing to turn every thought into an essay! Any other suggestions are very welcome.

I'll also be making an occasional radio programme for Sheffield Live, which is meant to be an extension of this blog. Hopefully it will be a chance to go deeper into those preoccupations which keep surfacing here, but fit awkwardly in the limits of a few paragraphs. It should also be a bit of fun.

The plan is for each programme to take a different question which I've been asked and use it as an excuse to talk to some interesting people. I'm starting with the question that gave this blog its name, asked years ago by a relative: "Isn't it time you got a proper job...?"

(Again, suggestions for other questions I should tackle would be great!)