Inspirational Lubricant Du Jour: The 1.75 L bottle of Knob Creek Small Batch that was consumed in its entirety at my birthday party last night.

I’ve got a confession to make, men. P.D. Montgomery is a pseudonym. I’m actually J.K. Rowling. But don’t worry: I’m still the Roger Murtagh of this blog.

To wit:

I’m going to keep it short today because, like my sis Jean Louise mentioned, I’m a-turnin’ old this weekend. Also, because I went to bed at 5.00 AM and I’m tired. Something tells me that Paul has related and/or incriminating footage he intends to attach to this week’s BroCast news broadcast, so keep an eye out for that.

(By the way, I’ve only just realized that “BroCast” is a pun on “Broadcast”. That’s why they pay me the big bucks, kids.)

Naturally, I’m thinking this week about the somewhat slippery concept of age. I’m certainly not turning old in the relative sense of the term. I’m not like, you know, 90. Besides, I’m pretty sure “referring to your late 20s as so old” is on one of those BuzzFeed lists of things millenials love to do. Still, I have nonetheless been thinking recently about the relationship between age and behavior.

We attach behavioral stigmas to age from the moment we’re born until the moment we die. People are very fond of saying when children are too old/young to do things and the same is true for the octogenarian/Tom Mooney crowd. More often than not, there’s some kind of judgment attached to these stigmas, whereby we decide whether the actions of others are suited to their age.

But as people, or millenial people in my case, we have our own internal clocks. Shouldn’t what matters most be what our own clocks tell us about when we should be doing things? There’s a popular narrative (and maybe even some actual research) which suggests that our generation is, on the whole, doing life stuff later than our predecessors. We’re getting married later, having kids later, etc. Is this a function of the internet-driven/instant gratification-rooted narcissism that people often ascribe to us? Probably. Am I still young enough for it not to matter whether people think I’m too old or young for things? Probably. Do I like asking myself question? You bet. My point is that it’s probably true that millenials (it’s an odious word, isn’t it?) are doing things later than other generations. I just don’t think anyone should care.

For topical instance, at what point does it become weird/unacceptable for me to stay up until 5.00 AM, drinking and singing with friends? Hopefully never. 30 years old would seem like a good cut-off for such chicanery, but that’s little more than, like, an arbitrary number based upon our Western affinity for doing things in 10s, man. It’s just, like, you know, so corporate.

Perhaps Jon Snow should have stayed a wildling.

Instead of deciding to stop things at age 30, I expect what will happen is that eventually other things in my life will simply and slowly start to take priority. And rather than deciding “I’m ____ years old and am therefore done behaving in such a ____________ way”, I’ll just gradually do certain things less. That’s how I prefer to think of it, not with arbitrary cut-off points but with needs or interests-driven, gradual changes of behavior.

The only downside of that approach is that I’ll get to say this less:

It could be, of course, that my body will tell me when it’s time to stop acting like I’m 21. That’ll probably happen. But until then, I think I’m going to happily ignore social stigmas and do what I want.

It’s my birthday! Go drink some brown liquor in my honor, bro. It’ll get you in the Bro-irthday spirit. (!)

P.D. Montgomery