You are a person who does a thing (S3E1)

Perception cannot stop you

I used to think you had to be a certain kind of person to do a certain kind of thing. The order of operations went:

1. Become person who does X.

2. Do X.

3. Win.

I’m sure you can see the flaw in this recipe.

So for most of my life, 90% of it, I didn’t drum. I was a guitar person. And guitar people, as a matter of absolute fact, play the guitar.¹ I could no more play a different instrument than I could grow 4 inches taller (a lifelong desire) or enjoy the cinematic output of Rob Schneider. It was hard-coded at birth.

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Stop perceiving me.

This is my niece, apropos of nothing but maybe apropos of all of us looking at her. It doesn’t really matter. Whether a thing is or isn’t happening is irrelevant. She is Schrödinger’s preppy. Reality bends to her assessment.

She hates being seen but is terrified of not being seen, and this is just one of the many things her, an eleven-year-old girl, and me, an almost 50-year-old man, share in common.

Another thing is drumming. She picked it up around the same time I put it down, and I’m hoping when I move her youthful enthusiasm will rekindle that flame. It’s a bit of a fool’s errand to bank on an 11-year-old’s continued interest in anything, but what else is the current moment than a time for foolish hope?

But a funny thing happens on your way from childhood through puberty. You become very aware of other people, and determine that all of them are watching you. As an 11-year-old my niece drums like the kit owes her money, with an expression of pure disdain for the instrument and the audience. She looks annoyed.

Annoyed that the audience exists? Annoyed that existence seems to demand one? Probably a lot to place on someone so young and yet it feels like it’s true.

We start to care more about how we’ll be perceived doing a thing than why we might be doing it in the first place. This is what we mean when we say we’re not an X, or a person who does X. We really mean we’re not a person who wants to be identified as thinking they’re good at doing X.

Well, a magical thing happens when you turn 50. A half-century, biological conflagration sweeps the psyche clean. At 50, and I can already feel this change taking place inside of me, you suddenly become a Person Who Does A Thing.

Things that happen when you turn 50 #1: You become a person who does a thing

Now you might be asking, Thom, I have to wait 34 years for this? (I assume everyone reading is around 16.) And the answer is no, you don’t have to wait. It’s achievable at any age. If you dance you’re a person who does dancing and that’s that.

But at 50, you have no choice. It just unlocks. Boom. What a relief! Suddenly anything you wanted to be a person doing is now a thing you do because you’ve started doing it. And all because you managed to be alive for 50 years.

Since it could be absolutely anything it hardly bears making a list, but that’s never stopped us before. So here are the top 3 things I’m most excited about becoming:

1. A poet. I used to write poetry and even went so far as to call myself one and then all of the above pounded me into a fine dust of non-believing. I’m looking forward to unlocking all that latent verse next year. I’m particularly excited about the epic on narrative RPGs I’ll finally be able to write.

2. An audio equipment repairer. The other day I bought a cassette deck and discovered after opening it up all its drive bands had melted into a slick oily mess. I ordered some replacements from the amazingly named Turntable Needles, and can’t wait for next June to get it up and running.

3. A DJ. Arguably this has happened already, if I’m to believe people asking me about it. But here I mean turntabilism, and for that you need the full heft of a half century behind you. That and a Pioneer DJM-400.

And that’s a thing that happens when you turn 50.

1. The first time I saw a band switch instruments between songs I understood why people hunted witches. What devilry is this? Burn them!