Thread by @therisingtithes

I'm not even trying to be disparaging, because there are some pretty decent names on that list,
but every time a #30Under30-type thing happens, I wonder if people are even thinking about all the people being subtly discouraged from actually being their best selves.

I say this as a nothing-under-30 who will never make such a list, & tries hard not to want to.

I wish the people who compiled such lists found less inadvertently high-stakes ways to phrase the successes of others.

Imagine the subtle message you send other creatives in that process sometimes:

"30 is the deadline. Here are these people's best times: 25, 24, 20, 18.

You better start running."

Nah, son. Better dan dat.

Thought experiment:
there is a talented person somewhere who will make a masterpiece of an opportunity at flat *60*, but doesn't have the resources, the privilege, the access, the time to get there at 30.

You really wanna *time* them, motherfucker?

TMI: when I was but a shrub with ambitions to be a writer, I remember discovering that one of my favs, Amelia Atwater-Rhodes, wrote her first book at 14.

I was 14 at the time.

I briefly went, "so I guess that's it for me."

It took a while for me to go, "but why the fuck tho? Why can't she be successful on a different timeline than you?"
But at the time, I felt like that meant there was an expectation I couldn't fill. That I was settling for a kind of mediocre in the face of it.

That 'if she could want to write at 14 and just be a writer, but I'm 14 and don't have a book, doesn't that mean I don't want it? Or I'll be lame, my work won't be as good as hers is? That it won't happen for me, or will take forever?'

Nah.
Nah, Baby Brandon.
Nah.
Shut up.

STOP ARBITRARILY STOPCLOCKING PEOPLE IN COMPARISON TO OTHER ARTISTS

Yes, making music or acting or being a model in your 20s is worthy of admiration.

You know what's just as noteworthy, if not more?

Wanting to make it, & working til 60 to make it.
Taking your time & knowing this is what you want.
Digging for 30 years til you break through.

I personally think I far prefer being lauded for taking my time & spending all of my years at this craft than making something at my present 27.

Why?

Because what if who I am at 27 eventually becomes the person I love the least, the person you can gain from the least?

You're allowed to be patient with yourself. You are not in a hurry. And media should *stop compelling you to believe that you are in a hurry*. You're really not. Take all the time you need. Don't exhaust yourself.

We're waiting right here at the *real* finish line: your own.