What a day! I felt the tingle as the forces of the universe aligned at 11:11:11 today on 11/11/11 and granted everyone in my timezone a wish^* right then.

Or maybe I didn’t. I may have been rewatching the best college story ever delivered and giggling like an idiot. (That’s a step up from the first time I heard the story, when it looked for a few moments like I might suffocate from guilty, horrified laughter.) Apparently there was also some kind of event between the moon and Jupiter last month, which I did notice at the time but didn’t know what I was noticing. Both time and the stars are pretty regular, reliable things that we attach names to and track, so I suppose it’s natural that we’re going to get excited when things line up.

Perhaps we’re really celebrating predictability, which is about the closest thing to stability we’re likely to be able to enjoy in an ever-shifting life.

Perhaps it’s another point in the constellation of celebration season, that time of year when it’s dark longer than it’s light, so we grasp at reasons to turn all the lights on and push back the dark with the sheer force of our cheerfulness.

Probably it’s really just a fun excuse to type a lot of 1s in a row.

*Since this proliferation of repeated digits coincides with Armistice Day, maybe lots of those people will/did wish for an end to war.

Astute readers of my blogular warblings over the past decade or so may have some hunches on why things have been so quiet on my public soapbox. Relative newcomers might point to social media and the allure of sharing short form blogs through the various sites that facilitate sharing quickly. You may all draw your own conclusions.

I noticed some friction recently between “arts and humanities people” and “STEM people” (which I had to look up, since I didn’t realise scientists, technologicians, engineers, and mathematicians had all been herded into one acronym). It feels similar to the animosity between some knitters and some crocheters, which I will never understand and take a certain offense to. As someone who does both, it means I occasionally get crap from one side or another. The STEM/arts debate hurts everyone, and it prevents people from having productive conversations. Not all scientists are antisocial autists. Not all arts people are innumerate. This is a boring debate.

Both artsy and sciencey people value creativity. Devising creative solutions to a problem, whether that problem be a blank canvas or a molecule that hasn’t ever been made, moves humanity forward. If something has been done it’s easy enough to do again; these days you can ask a computer or a robot to do it in many cases. The movers and shakers in any field are the ones who are the most creative. Arts and STEM people should be able to talk to one another about this, as both camps do a lot of thinking about how to facilitate creative work.

All this came to mind when I stumbled over a line from J. J. Thomson (who you may remember from your secondary school chemistry class, if you had one). He was talking about science, but you could easily replace the word “research” with “art” and get an equally salient point:

If you pay a man a salary for doing research, he and you will want to have something to point to at the end of the year to show that the money has not been wasted. In promising work of the highest class, however, results do not come in this regular fashion, in fact years may pass without any tangible results being obtained, and the position of the paid worker would be very embarrassing and he would naturally take to work on a lower, or at any rate, different plane where he could be sure of getting year by year tangible results which would justify his salary. The position is this: You want this kind of research, but if you pay a man to do it, it will drive him to research of a different kind. The only thing to do is pay him for doing something else and give him enough leisure to do research for the love of it.

People know that artists need to be supported but not necessarily pressured to create art, and I think it’s the case for creative work in fields less commonly associated with creativity as well.

Last week I joyfully celebrated my 30th birthday. My sister was in town with her husband, and I enjoyed several days of being showered with attention. Thursday we went out for sushi after stopping by to see the knitters at Brooks, Friday a couple friends hosted us for dinner and drinks, Saturday we headed out to watch the US/England match and drink some more. The universe gave me a birthday present, as the Mr. was offered a job last week. It’s only a 6 week contract, but it’s a job. As a result, I’ve had more time than usual in the flat on my own, giving me the opportunity to catch up on little things.

Some people go to pieces on their milestone birthdays (after about 25). I knew one guy who spent the entire year running up to his 30th birthday exercising and eating protein shakes so he could say he was in the best shape of his life when he turned 30. I think he did the same thing for his 40th. Another guy gets depressed every year around his birthday. I can only imagine what his 30th was like. I’ve known lots of people who jokingly refer to their birthdays after 29 as “the fourth anniversary of my 29th birthday.” And, of course, it’s not polite to ask a woman her age.

Me? I couldn’t turn 30 fast enough. Being older means you’ve experienced more, which I’m on board for. It also raises your credibility (however unfairly) in other people’s eyes. It’s been a little while since I’ve said something and gotten that look that says “Oh, you’ll understand when you’re older,” and the only thing that’s changed is that I am older, rather than any age-induced paradigm shift. I rarely get carded when buying alcohol anymore, though I suspect that’s more due to the change of scenery.

I like having a tidy pile of experiences to build upon. I like being old enough to be allowed to make my own choices, like whether to drink, vote, or spend money. I like being “old.” Happy birthday to me.