Milestones, Moving Targets, and Maturity

Not 15 minutes into my first foray with casual games, I've married rich.  There's any number of directions to vent a feminist tirade about this artifact of a social commentary...  

Should marriage be the end-all-be-all?  Are these the only 3 motives for marriage?  Who emails marriage proposals anyway?  To a man?  

But since it's my birthday, I decided to reflect on the broader theme of "milestones, moving targets, and maturity."  

25.  Kiss goodbye to the early 20's distinction.  More bleakly, my next major age-designated milestone is "my scary age," where I self-designate as over the hill, followed by senior citizen status and qualification for social security (if such things exist in the 2040's).  

A friend once told me that you know if you've "peaked" based on whether you'd rather people over or underestimate your age.  

Maybe I haven't "peaked" yet, but I think I might be a lifelong "maturity junkie," because I always wish they overestimated.  I always wanted to seem older than my years and yet never felt like I quite managed it.  I realized that not only did I have the "age-designated" milestones- learners permits, licenses, ability to vote, buy cigarettes and date men 2x your age, and order stiff drinks at the bar (to share, of course, with younger men with falsies), I'd littered the road in between with all these milestones that were more psychological than temporal...  

... Reading books outside of the suggested age range (could be steamy Danielle Steele novels or my short-lived 9th grade trist with Joyce's Finnegan's Wake); applying for a passport; getting pulled over by the cops; dating older men; attempting every service on the spa menu (from highlights to a harrowing adolescent experience with innocently named "silhouette analysis"); buying/renting things- rental cars, hotels, planes, apartments; conversely, walking away from an irrational sense of obligation to buy things despite extended consultation (girl scout cookies to financial planners); earning graduate degrees at an almost obscenely young age...    

But these aren't really milestones; more like moving targets.  I can see as far ahead of me as behind me-- to things I'm embarrasingly slow to get to and may skip entirely...  prepare taxes, swim more than a half dozen laps, wear contacts, keep a "best friendship" longer than 5 years, commit to a dude for more than 5 weeks, apply liquid eyeliner, buy a car, drive a stick...    

When I tallied, there were an almost equal number of things on "done" and "to do" lists.  "Done" items also had a way of propogating at an alarming rate.  It wasn't enough to donate to kiva, now I want an endowment with my name on it.  Now that I can drink, I want a refined palate.  Now that I have a passport, I want to run out of space on it, be conversationally fluent in a second language, take an international beau, and have covered 4 continents.  Did I mention aforementioned passport expires in less than 14 months?      

Maybe Lennon was right, "Life is what happens to you while you're making other plans." Dad used to make fun of me for never taking pictures.  I went skydiving and all I have is a kitschy clip art certificate.  I thought by not leaving a trace, I could forget the humiliating bits and only remember the awesomeness.  But memory works the opposite way.  It blurs achievement and throws failure into high relief, particularly for people like me who like to tell catastrophic stories.  I don't remember finishing 2 marathons all that vividly, but I do remember forgetting to pack a sports bra for the first.  

I still get frustrated when tourists strike a pose at Cheers bar or in the middle of the infinite corridor.  Don't they have anything else to do?  Is their life so unremarkable that this is the pinnacle of it?  But I'm starting to get it-- it makes sense to keep track of the velocity of milestones passed, however small they may be, rather than the volume of unfinished ones ahead.