“We grow neither better nor worse as we get old, but more like ourselves.”

May Lamberton Becker

When I was in middle school, I used to joke that I’d rather die than make it to thirty.

I wasn’t really joking. Yet here I am.

Specifically, in the highest ryokan in Hokkaido, where I celebrated my best birthday two years ago. My favorite prefecture in Japan, on my favorite season, featuring my favorite onsen, favorite food, favorite hiking guide, and memories of that surprise TV interview: it felt apt to recreate these now, and achieve closure.

Over the past two years, I went through more experiences than in the previous twenty-eight years combined. Discoveries, adventures, love, pain, life-threatening terrors; screaming in freedom, and crying myself to sleep; feeling alive for the first time, and wanting to die. I’m a different person now.

There are many things I wish to say about those fourteen months of travelling in East Asia, three months of rest in Israel, and seven months of studying in Tokyo. But I can’t just write them all down. I have too many pursuits, and not enough free time. Adulthood sucks.

So instead, my new blog, Sex and the Biggest City, has become my way of making sense of this period. I will continue to write new chapters, until the story can be published as a memoir.

To my surprise, school has also prompted me to reflect on my past. In the last few weeks, I had to write a user manual about myself in third person; and create a chart about my happiness throughout my life.

As I look back on thirty years of existence, I look forward to a new decade, where things will continue, for better or worse, to surprise me.

For now, the following meditations from the past seven months will encapsulate these.

1.	I used to think that people will make time for me if they want me in their life. Now I know they won't make time for me even if they enjoy my company. I am not special enough.

2.	I crave stability, yet reject stagnation. My goal in life is to never sink into a comfort zone and unchanging conditions. I will always seek ways to challenge myself, even at the risk of losing my social, romantic, and mental well-being. Which happened when most aspects of my life - family, friends, romance, money, work, health - deteriorated throughout October, until hitting a new low in December. At least school is okay. 

3.	I love being new to things. The downside is making mistakes out of inexperience. The upside is learning from them and improving my psyche.

4.	My mission to experience everything the world has to offer is a direct result of my writer's mindset. I seek pain as much as pleasure, because it exposes me to the full array of the human condition. I will say yes to almost anything.

5.	I avoid boredom like fire. Never make small talk with me or expect me to give up my passions for safe monotony.

6.	I can tell if I will get along with someone from the first moment. It all comes down to the spark in their eye. I know who I want to befriend or date before they even open their mouth. Some people seem so dead-eyed, abnormally normal, empty on the inside. Bollas's normotic illness is the pernicious epidemic of the postmodern age. Every person I’ve ever loved, whether platonically or romantically, was love at first sight.

7.	My inability to read some people will never cease to frustrate me. I can see things from another person's perspective, thereby understanding their thoughts and emotions. Yet some people throw me off so much, that I feel like a failure, both as a human being and a writer. How am I to create diverse characters, or stay on good terms with people who act without emotion or reason?

8.	I recently discovered that I have a type, much to my surprise. Sadly, it is the rarest combination of body and spirit. I can't say it to just about anyone, because it will affect their attitude, until they lose precisely the quality that I like.

9.	It is easier for me to make friends as an adult than it was as a child. Most people might attest to the opposite. Thus, I still struggle to make real friends. After trying to do so in Tokyo for seven months, I can’t say that I have a single close friend here. My best friends for life disappeared for no reason, while my new classmates repeatedly turned me down. 

10.	It is not hard to stay in touch. My generation simply lacks the social aplomb to call or message. I don’t know why a quick "how are you?" is expecting too much. If you ask about my well-being, I will cherish you for life.

11.	Humans are born with the ability to lead a caring lifestyle. Our biology does not gravitate toward indifference, estrangment, and antagonism. On the contrary, the brain is designed to seek patterns, build connections, and empathize. Society simply corrupts us into playing games with each other, ignoring other people's feelings, and trampling peers in imaginary contests. A species whose survival depends on empathy has lost interest in mere sympathy. Thus, Hegel's master-slave dialectics are a result of Althusser's interpellation.

12.	I despise human beings with all my might. Yet without their recognition, I would lose my mind. I will never stop believing in their potential to do good. Ergo, I will always end up disappointed by their misconduct.

13.	Love and traveling make me feel alive. Yet I would give them up in an instant to publish my stories and make a living as an author. Writing will always be number one.

Would I still be happy in this scenario, though, as a successful, albeit lonely, writer? I honestly can’t tell. But I will never be happy as a failed writer who has friends.

14.	Nothing on this planet scares me anymore, and there’s nothing I can’t do, as long as it is only up to me. I can live alone on the other side of the globe and travel by myself to countries I know nothing about. I can dance alone in nightclubs and hit on people out of my league. I can control my anxiety and act despite my qualms. I can take criticism, combat any problem, and implement any desire. Every skill necessary for self-sufficiency and survival, I have acquired. My only obstacles are money, and other people’s apathy.

15.	There is no correlation between maturity and success. Many people I know in high-ranking or well-paying positions are emotionally crippled, too lazy or anxious to perform simple tasks, lack basic communication skills, can't maintain a household or spend time alone, are intimidated by planning and preparation, and only do as they please, instead of meeting people halfway.

16.	The key to dealing with mixed signals is to disregard words and only pay attention to actions. I never say something I don’t mean, and consider words sacred, so it took me this long to understand that many people contradict this. If their actions speak different, there is no point in holding on to lies masquerading as promises.

17.	I am alone in the world, whether I live in my birth country or on the other side of the planet. Because I'm the black sheep of my family - the only one with a different personality, worldview, and passions, who wants to stop arguing. They will never solve their problems, let alone admit them, and instead continue fighting over the same things for decades. 

They watch each other like hawks and shove their noses to every affair; criticize and scream about things they pretended not to mind; make promises or denunciations they don't mean; deny shouting and offending; play the victim; and shift all the blame. After hours or days of screaming, during which they fling all their unrelated anger and frustration with their own life, they cry, promise to end this cycle, and then do it again. This, on top of the fact that they don't like who I am or care about my happiness, if it deviates from their standards. 

I never came out of my shell and experienced joy until I left Israel, because I'd always felt judged and stifled around my family; a delusional freak who ought to be straightened. My entire life, I have let their short temper and destructive defense mechanisms slide. But they will never grow up. 

The truth is, I lose the will to live every time I return to Israel. Yet I’m trapped in this dynamic, because I’m financially dependent on my family. Without intending to, I have come to lead a double life, under a different name, when I'm far.

18.	If someone had asked me before my birth, “Do you want to come into this world, to this specific time, place, species, and family that you are stuck with?” I would have said no. This reality is not worth existing.

19.	Then again, misery and lack are the parents of creativity. Without my lifelong letdowns, I would not be who I am.

20.	People can change. They simply don’t want to.

21.	From high school to the end of my twenties, I felt sixteen. Now, I actually feel like I'm six. 

"People don't change - they revert," a friend told me in autumn. "They build an armor for themselves in adolescence. Some muster up the courage to shed it in adulthood, and regain their original personality from childhood." 

I am finally who I was before society scarred me: a bold, passionate, lonely, and misunderstood child, who is still learning about the world, leading a messy life, and dreaming of a better future. Except now, I'm also independent and emotionally capable. My political views have always been left-wing anarchist, and I rebel against any system that oppresses me.

22.	Age is just a number. When I was 19, my best friend was 32; I led the lifestyle of a thirty-something office worker. It was always abundantly clear to me that I would go through the stages of life in reverse. Nowadays, I act like a college graduate.

23.	My entire life has been a search for depth. In the meaning of my existence, the nature of my friendships, and value of my endeavors. In a post-modern digital society ruled by late-stage capitalism, however, five-minute friends, hookups, and memes have turned any earnest 
pursuit into laughing stock.

24.	Critical thinking is the sole indicator of intellectual intelligence. The ability to step out of your comfort zone and face the unknown is the sole indicator of maturity, which is fed by emotional intelligence. Some people are smart, albeit immature; others are mature, albeit stupid. Many are neither. I look for those who are both.

25.	When I come on terms with one of my flaws, I strive to outgrow it. The next immaturity I should address is my tendency to let people I love walk all over me. Whether friends, certain family members, or lovers - when I turn a blind eye to their red flags, or make excuses for their behavior, I bend over backwards, afraid to lose them. 

As the only gentle member of my family, I feel bad if I mistreat them the way they mistreat me. So they try to get away with everything around me. Likewise, I tend to idolize a new person I fall in love with, and let them play with me just for a chance to see them again. So I should learn how to love without becoming a doormat.

26.	The universe is as terrifying as it is wondrous. I love it so much, that I hate my love for it. It trapped us on a planet in a cold vacuum with no heartbeat that will expand for eternity. It trapped me in a decaying body, doomed to agonize over my mortality, before turning to dust. 

I am petrified of demise, whether the universe’s or mine. I am so scared of dying, that I want to die. And I am alone in the world, but so are we. Aliens are already here - there is no need to send a life signal to outer space. As the Earth warms, humanity turns frigid. Will this bizarre species ever stop prioritizing money over each other? 

Even my friends and family turn their backs on me. I will forever be an outsider. Humanity is where hope goes to die.

27.	Love is the only cure for time. The only time when time doesn't exist. And nothing scares me more than the passage of time. 

Wrinkles horrify me. Changing digits today makes me want to cry. What will my life look like at forty? Fifty? As a shriveled, failed writer? Who from my present will remain in my future, and what will our habitat look like? 

I will lose the game of life over and over again, until I won't recognize myself in the mirror. In the blink of an eye, everything and everyone that I love will be gone. I am a speck of dust on an ancient, fading mosaic. But I’d choose terror over despair until my last breath.

28.	I know what it means to love, but not to be loved, and thus, make love. The highlights of my dating life have all enacted the same cycle:

- Someone hits on me at least on two different occasions, and suggests meeting.

- I am not excited at first, delay our meeting because I’m busy, but try to keep an open mind.

- We meet spontaneously. I fall head over heels. We decide to meet again.

- They ghost me. Now I’m the one chasing them.

- Weeks or months pass. I realize I’m in love. Yet they’ve already disappeared from my life.

- More months pass. We talk again briefly. Their lack of interest proves that my feelings are unrequited.

This cycle makes me wonder: am I the problem? 

Making up stories in my head is my favorite thing to do with my consciousness. Maybe I’m a bit delusional sometimes. 

29.	I will never be able to achieve everything I dream of, because my time on this Earth is too brief. There are a thousand things I could have accomplished by now, if it weren't for capitalism: novels, short stories, poems, screenplays, movies, songs, albums, travels, paintings, memoirs, and more.

Time is money in this world. This limitation led me to stop consuming media two years ago. I barely have time to write my own stories, let alone read or watch other people's creations.

30.	Physically, psychologically, socially, and romantically, I am doing better than ever. I might not have a relationship, a publishing deal, readership, someone who cares about my art, and more than one or two real friends, who live on other continents. But I am finally capable of pursuing whatever I want, while forming healthy relationships. 

I’ve always known who I am and what I want out of life. I’ve always known that I was different from 99% of humans, and wasn’t meant to come into this world. I've always had a plan, and stood behind every big decision I’ve made. It was lack of confidence, caused by my Israeli upbringing, that is to blame for my late blooming. 

Still, financially, I've never been worse. Without intending to, I have become a starving artist. I am not satisfied with most aspects of my existence, and have too many dreams that keep me up at night. Yet I have grown to love myself now, more than ever.