It's been three decades, what do I have to show for it?

In a few hours, I'll technically turn 30, which isn't so bad now that it has arrived. Not that I thought it would be awful, it's just a strange, if arbitrary, milestone.

When all is said and done, I could easily run this into a marathon post, consuming hours of my time and ending up right back where I started. There has to be an easier, more entertaining way to handle this, not to mention the fact that most of my friends have already hit the milestone with little fanfare, crying or hospitalization for geriatric illnesses.

Why make a mountain out of a molehill, right?

It just brings to mind how many times I've seen an achievement punctuated with that familiar refrain of "before they were 30." Some people have made their first million by now, others have churned out works of art of unthinkable complexity and beauty.

I'm not in that group. I like to think I'm in the second group, who continue to produce throughout a lifetime in lieu of a jarring burst of brilliance.

Still, for 30 years, I've seen some stuff and done some stuff from the utterly mundane - I was potty trained - to the moderately bizarre - I have collected multiple concussions, including one from slamming my head into the bunk above me my freshman year of college.

Here's a small sampling, just to help me keep things in perspective. Plus, you never know what will happen in the future and I'd like to leave an easy roadmap for journalists of the future tasked with writing human interest stories when I invent something humanity simply can't live without or eat the world's largest steak.

In my first 30 years, I have:

* Worked in the locker room of a professional sports team.
* Stood at the 50-yard line at Lambeau Field and Solider Field
* Caught a foul ball, had one lofted to me in the outfield from a pitcher warming up and had one rifled above my head for annoying a visiting outfielder
* Lived in several major cities, including one on the East Coast
* Married a wonderful woman who still hasn't figured out that she's out of my league
* Helped people train their dogs at the Humane Society
* Learned more than enough trivia about my hometown to keep tourists busy at every stoplight in the downtown area
* Written for a handful of important newspapers and ran several inconsequential ones
* Peed in the Governor's bathroom at the Illinois governor's mansion (8th grade field trip)
* Dipped my feet in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans - this includes seeing the sun rise and set on both coasts
* Learned to work with my hands, be it inside a wall, under a hood or in order to build something useful
* Spent enough time behind a camera lens to take pictures that others can't believe I captured
* Fell in love and survived
* Fell out of love and survived
* Made major and minor mistakes and can still honestly say that I'm happier today than I have ever been in my adult life
* Hung around long enough to be respected for being intelligent after hiding from it in grammar school when it wasn't nearly as cool to be bright
* Ridden in a Model T Ford
* Emerged from my turbulent 20s with all my fingers and toes intact
* Visited over half of the 50 states
* Worked on several career paths - some I'd do again, some I'd do again if the money was better and some that I'd need powerful narcotics to get back into
* Learned that much of life revolves around balance. It's a strange lesson and one I'm still working on
* Learned that there is a time to sacrifice for your principles and it's rarely convenient. It's still worth it in the long run
* Learned to drive a stick shift vehicle without any major incident

(Image from: xmlgrrl.com)