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Reflecting on 30

2 October 2025

I turned 30 recently. Three years ago, I wrote a post on my 27 Maxims after I turned twenty-seven. I don't have 30 new maxims this year, but I thought it would be cool to reflect on my entire life and distill all my achievements and perhaps life lessons into a blog post.

First of all, a question:

Who the hell am I?

Don't know yet!

This a very interesting internal dialogue I regularly have with myself, and get to observe, and there it is written out in print. I'm not sure if it's a negative thing that I don't have an answer for myself. I certainly know a bit about myself, some things I like and dislike, I certainly have opinions (strong ones), but on a big-picture scale, I don't know who I am. And what does that even mean? Don't know! I guess it just highlights that I have some missing piece(s) in my life or sense of self. But I'm not hopeless about it, I know they'll come soon. Just noteworthy that I'm 30 and still having that dialogue!

Accomplishments and significant things

I don't want this post to seem like I'm tooting my own horn. Some of the things I put on this list will even be fairly unexciting. It's mainly for me to visualize my life from a bird's eye view. Maybe it'll help me to answer the question I posed above.

So, what have I done in the past 30 years? Rather, what was I able to accomplish? I'll try to dig deep here. I'll even try to go roughly in order.

• I was born into the world.
• I completed elementary school, middle school, junior high, high school, college, and graduate school — all with pretty good grades.
• I traveled outside my home country.
• I learned how to water ski.
• I learned a decent amount of Japanese, most of which is presently lost to non-use, but the elementary skills remain.
• I got pretty good at making pour-over coffee.
• I learned how to speedrun Banjo-Tooie for the Nintendo 64, and got to a medium-high skill level.
• I moved away from home.
• I made some cool projects that I'm proud of, one of which is this website.
• I wrote 40 or so blog posts.
• I made a YouTube video that reached over 50,000 views.
• I lived in three different US states.
• I got married.
• I bought my first house.
• I sold my first house.
• I worked at a FAANG company.
• I maintained a few long-lasting friendships, the oldest of which is currently 23 years.

That's all I got! What do you think? It's a little lame, imo. Could have done more things. It's okay though, I was always a homebody/thinker/dreamer. I'm trying to be more of a doer these days.

Three more maxims

I've decided that I'm going to make an addendum to my 27 Maxims from three years ago. Now that I'm 30, I should add three more. They should be reflective of what I've learned in the past three years, or of what has resonated with me the most.

If you didn't read my original 27 Maxims, here they are for reference. Be sure to pause here and read them.

Now, for getting to the end of this post, here's your reward — Derek's Three Additional Maxims.

1. Stick to your guns. Even if people disagree with you, they'll respect you if you have a backbone (unless they're really annoying).
2. Don't be fake. If everyone's honest and authentic, there will be less: misunderstanding, conflict, and resentment in the world.
3. It's not all about you. Becoming an adult means accepting that your life doesn't need to be perfect and happy all the time — you have a responsibility to sacrifice in order to make others' lives better.

That third one's mostly for the boys. Sorry, ladies. tips fedora

— Derek Andersen

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