So I’m going to turn 30 on 30th May 2014. There, I’ve said it.

Keep them coming. For the love of God, keep them coming. “I’ll tell you when I’ve had enough”, etc.

I’ve always had a real mental block about turning 30. I also had one about turning 25, as I wasn’t sure how to deal with being ‘late twenties’. Then my friends told me to man the fuck up and embrace the ‘mid-twenties’ classification, which I did, and by the time I actually approached my late twenties I became more fixated with the big 3-0 than the ‘late twenties’ mantle.

I don’t think it helps that I spend my days reading F. Scott Fitzgerald for the old P to the h to the D. He’s full of delightful insight on the inevitable shuffling towards death that he perceives to exponentially speed up once one has bypassed the 24 year marker. Behold:

She was a faded but still lovely woman of twenty-seven.

Life promises so very much to a pretty girl between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five that she never quite recovers from it.

It is a simple soul indeed to whom as many things are significant and meaningful at thirty as at ten years before.

Fitzgerald is judging you.

This article by Olivia Wilde consoled me slightly, but it also reminded me that I’m not a Hollywood actor who got to be on The O.C. So I’d better take that off the 30 Before 30 list right off the bat.

Self-pity (first world problems style) aside, the point of this post was to introduce my series of 30 things to do before I reach the grand old age of 30. Some of them are bizarre, some are pretty lame, and some are borderline unachievable. But I’m going to give it a shot, and if it makes me feel better about the ravages of time on my stillborn ambitions, then hell yes I will indulge myself. In bullet-point form, obv.