The 30-year crisis is something I think everyone goes through, even though explaining it is far from easy. It’s not as predictable as the midlife crisis, the one around 40 — the one that ideally brings you closer to the day of your death than to the day of your birth. Still, it’s perceived as a turning point, especially for people like me who had one at 20, one at 25, and who knows how many more will come.

What makes this moment delicate is undoubtedly the ambiguity of one’s own situation: when you compare yourself to your peers, you find some who are living together and expecting their second child, and others who complain about being scammed while trying to buy a Playstation 5 on eBay. Honestly speaking, I feel infinitely closer to the second group than to the first.

At this point, a mechanism kicks in, similar to the one that makes us set New Year’s resolutions — we try to compensate for the shortcomings of life with some bold gesture. And who am I to exempt myself from such a tradition?

Choosing goals isn’t that easy. In the year of the pandemic, many activities are off-limits, but I still managed to figure something out. I decided on two goals: one physical, one mental.

  • Run a marathon.
  • Read every day.

The first is fairly easy to explain: running 42 kilometers starting from a state of near-total sedentariness isn’t easy, but I think it’s doable — it’ll be a great challenge.

The second point is more delicate. I’ve always read, but always very inconsistently — I might finish a book in a few days, but also go months without opening one. My inconsistency has always weighed heavily on me, so I decided that such a simple goal might give me that minimum of discipline. Initially I thought of something like “read a book a week,” but an average 250-page book in 7 days means 35 pages a day — a goal that, in busy periods, is far from trivial. So I’m aiming for a lower but definitely achievable target.

Progress Tracking Link to heading

I’ve created a page to keep track of my running results and get a very clear idea of how things are going. Obviously, being self-taught, I’ll make plenty of mistakes, but it’s also nice to get my hands dirty by proceeding blindly.