In your thirties, you tell yourself that you are still in your twenties. Many in their forties tell themselves the same lie, until a moment like this and suddenly you see yourself clearly.
This week she turned 32, really the perfect age — not too young, not too old and about the same age I was when we moved to Los Angeles 25 years ago, two kids in tow.
With the help of our knowledge bank, you can choose for variations in your new neighborhood by:
But to zero in on the best place for you you’ll have to visit and schedule time to explore potential new homes in a region.
Oh, darn!
Adult Life Stages
Part One: She’s Leaving Home, Not Living Alone (Buy Buy)
Part Two: Failing at Growing Up
Part Three: Love, Marriage, Baby Carriage, or …
Part Four: Crisis and Pivots for 28 -32 Year Olds
Most of us become more serious about what lies ahead in our thirties having navigated through the passage at end of our twenties .
John Hodgman. “In your twenties you tell yourself the lie that you are unusual, unprecedented, and interesting.
You do this largely by purchasing things or stealing things.
You adorn yourself with songs and clothes and borrowed ideas and poses.
In your thirties, you tell yourself that you are still in your twenties.
Many in their forties tell themselves the same lie, until a moment like this and suddenly you see yourself clearly.” pg 183
Gail Sheehy described what usually unfolds in our lives roughly between the ages of 30-38 as rooting and extending.
Sheehy: “People buy houses and become very earnest about climbing career ladders.
Men, in particular, concern themselves with “making it.”
A major part of the settling process involves converting the dream into concrete goals.
For many men, the early 30s is the blue-suit period.
They set a timetable for fulfilling their goals.
It is of consuming importance to become acknowledged as a junior member of their occupational tribe.
Men who continue to focus narrowly their external goals can be, more than at any other time in their lives, shallow and boring.
My have mastered early adult tensions, or still working on them.”
Chris Erskine. “This week she turned 32, really the perfect age — not too young, not too old and about the same age I was when we moved to Los Angeles 25 years ago, two kids in tow.
We were lured here by the great schools, easy parking and the generosity of spirit.
From all accounts, L.A. offered the kind of warm, small-town vibe young parents are always seeking.
Twenty-five years later, our house — no one’s idea of a mansion — is reportedly worth well over $1 million, and yet we still have no money.
It’s like Rapunzel having all that hair and nothing to comb it with. It’d be like ultra-smiley Anna Kendrick not having any teeth.”
In Erik Erikson’s theory, you’ll recall, “rooting and extenders” embark on full adulthood near the end of his early adulthood .
Approximate Age: Early adulthood ( 20 – 39)
Significant Relationship: Friends, partners
Existential Question: Can I love
Examples: Romantic relationships
Psychosocial Crisis: Intimacy vs. Isolation
Virtues: Love
Hodgman. “Or let’s say later you move to Park Slope, Brooklyn, in your late thirties because you suddenly, impossibly, have some money coming in from television.
You are able to actually buy an apartment, and you think, this is it: a mortgage, real estate taxes, a sleepy neighborhood full of strollers and unexciting restaurants.
You have grown up.
But it turns out all of Brooklyn is suddenly alive with a not-growing-up renaissance.“pg. 113-114
“You can walk for the first time to the newest bars to hear comedy and new music.
You are surrounded by people younger than you whose sense of style is to look like you.
Young men grow dad beards and cultivate pallor and belly chub.” pg. 114
What once felt like one uniform generation at a point in time, now segments again into eight community lifestyles.
And clustered into the upper third of lifestyles based on income and status Wealthy Influentials, Wireless Resorters and Permanent Temporaries.
They’ve taken making it seriously while living in a sample of communities across the western region of the United States.
- California: Irvine, Mission Viejo and Westwood
- Colorado: Boulder and Creede
- Arizona: Scottsdale
- New Mexico: Santa Fe
Lifestyle Profiles: Midlife Success
Ages: 30-44
Life Stages: Singles and Couples
Community Neighbors:
Wealthy Influentials
03Y1S1, Movers & Shakers – WIAE Affluently Elite (Scottsdale, AZ)
12Y1C1, Brite Lites Lil City – WIDM Digitally Mobiles (Santa Fe, NM)
19Y1S2, Home Sweet Home – WIES Exurb Society (Irvine, CA)
08Y1S2, Executive Suites – WIES Exurb Society (Mission Viejo, CA)
Community Neighbors:
Wireless Resorters
25Y1T1, Country Casuals – WRPR Premier Resorts (Westwood, CA)
11Y1T1, God’s Country – WRMR Maturing Resorts (Boulder, CO)
37Y1T2, Mayberry-ville – WRMR Maturing Resorts (Creede, CO)
Community Neighbors:
Permanent Temporaries
30Y1S3, Suburban Sprawl – PTIMM Interim Middle Managers
Erskine. “It sure beats some of the things I was doing at 33: a new parent changing diapers in New Orleans; lying back on some ungodly uncomfortable Ikea couch at 8 p.m. on a Saturday night just whipped and wondering how to get the dishes done.
Or realizing Posh was pregnant — again?! — even as the MasterCard interest was eating up our paychecks.
“To California, we’ll go!” I insisted, and that pretty much set us on the downward spiral we’re still experiencing today.”
Fast forward to an almost empty-nest household when the first wave of kids, two girls and a boy, grew up way too fast and each beginning to make it.
For Erskine a teenager fills their void at least partially.
Erskine. “With each new day, a fifth-grader fills more of the world.
He’ll add muscles between breakfast and lunch.
I see him now stretched out on the couch he outgrew this afternoon, taller than he was five breaths before.
For years, the Little Guy has been a main player in the column, replacing his older brother, the Boy, who sort of aged out of that slapstick suburban world.”
“On the couch, the little guy is tumbling around before school, snow-plowing the pillows in the way that drives his mother nuts.
I look over and realize: “That’s what’s really off around here: We now have an only child.”
Over the years, my wife and I have had every form of family.
We started out with two kids.
One girl, one boy, a princess and a prince.
Nice and comfortable, two kids.”
More on the trials and tribulations of the adult world.
And, the next transition encountered when you realize your life may actually be half over.
Part Six: Authenticity Crisis for 35 – 45 Year Olds
You’ll recall that Early Adulthood is a time of dating, marriage, family and friendships.
Making new or renewed choices.
“But they bring the money in,” she says of the tourists, as if they are her city’s lifeblood, as if Santa Monica were a depressed Third World port sleepily awaiting the next cruise ship.
