On pancakes and aging

Plus a list of 29 things I believe to be true

Necessary Detail is going paid, people!

I feel cringey about it, but I am trusting my gut.

I am challenging myself to publish a Substack letter every week for my 29th year. (I am giving myself 4 skips because I am only human afterall.) If you become a paid subscriber, you will get every single letter, which if you are doing the math, comes out to a clean $1.25 per letter over the course of the year. I don’t know if that makes you feel better or worse about joining the club, but I can’t think of anything I can buy for $1.25, so maybe it really is a steal.

If you can’t swing the $5 a month but really really want to read along, shoot me an email and we can figure something out.

Anyway, here’s the very first of this year of letters! Thank you so much for being here.

Someone asked me recently what it is I write about. I answered, “Myself. And also, time.”

I am obsessed with the fact that we exist in the space time continuum and are continually meeting new versions of ourselves while storing past versions within us like Russian nesting dolls.  I possess a real affinity for nostalgia. One of my favorite hobbies is dreaming and planning for the future.  I am obsessed with time, how it impacts who we are, how we manage it, how we fight against it, how we might relax into its flow like a lazy river.

So naturally, I have to write about my birthday.  It exists at the intersection of my favorite writing subjects: myself and time.

I turned 29 yesterday.  The day itself was sweet and low key, driven only by what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it.  Following my desires led me promptly to pancakes, followed by a bookstore, a journaling sesh, a walk, and a nap.  Technically I worked in the evening because that is when our campus ministry meets, but that too felt like a joy and a celebration.  At the end of the day I cried at the kitchen table with my roommate because all of the love I was shown swelled and lodged in my chest and simply had to come out as a tear or two.  

In my experience, there are things people can warn you about that you simply cannot comprehend until you live it yourself.  The dislocation of graduating college, the euphoria of falling in love, heartbreak’s all consuming nature and how it gradually resides, moving across the country and how it forces you to grow, seminary and how it challenges you at every level of yourself, have been such things in my life.  Now I have a new one to add to the list, aging.  

My dad is the youngest 63 year old you will ever meet.  He has told me for years, in his optimistic and disbelieving tone, “Just wait Hunter, I didn’t think I would get old.  I watched it happen to my parents and thought, ‘Surely not.’  But one day you will be like me, waking up early against your wishes, telling the same stories over and over, feeling like on the inside you’re still 25 but your body didn’t get the memo.”  

This unavoidable truth came into stark relief for me yesterday.  

I woke up 29 years old and wanted pancakes immediately.  I normally savor my slow mornings of coffee, smoothie, journaling, a little TikTok, but my plan for the day was to follow my desires and my desire said PANCAKES NOW!!!! 

I had my gluten free, peanut butter chocolate chip pancakes with a side of bacon and absolutely reveled in them.  My mouth is watering even now.  I left the restaurant knowing I had maybe an hour and a half before the sugar coma set in.  I was right.

By the time I got home, I was truly feeling ill.  I needed some protein.  So I made my normal smoothie and sat in my normal chair and journaled and it was lovely.  An intense sugar crash is absolutely a price I am willing to pay for the euphoria of that first bite of birthday pancakes.

As I was trying to recover from said pancakes, a memory floated into my consciousness.  On my 20th birthday, I distinctly remember gallivanting around drinking only coffee and eating only sugar and carbs and giggling with my friends at my party, recounting I hadn’t had anything nutritious all day.  And I felt GREAT.  Filled to the brim with energy!  I probably went to classes and wrote a paper and took a test too!  Now, not a chance.

What is impossible to reconcile is that my 20th birthday was nine years ago.  NINE.  And even more impossible to believe is that in those nine years I have aged.  My body has changed.  My energy and tolerance and preferences and capacity have changed.

As I relayed this troubling realization to my roommate yesterday we laughed because we felt its truth so acutely and I joked, “They never said this would happen to me!”  They totally did.  All the time.  But it was impossible to believe until I was living it.