I handled turning 30 so well you’d have thought I was getting younger. Me and the band played the next night and rocked the Speakeasy. Then the night after that we hit the clubs till dawn, worked through the next day and went to gym in the evening.

I caught some quick zeds and then went to dinner with my girl Ange. I followed this with an orgiastic bout of wild, virulent, er, I mean virile sex which lasted hours. The next day I slept late and went for a mountain bike.

The week after turning 30 was a bit harder. My sore knee started hurting again, so I had to make it a back and arms week at the gym.

Work got a bit hectic, so I didn’t see my girl that week.

On the Thursday I spotted a grey hair in my left sideburn that the girl who did my dye job must have missed. I plucked it with the same tweezers I was using for my nose hairs and went and caught a big band jazz concert with my mate Fred, who had free tickets.

In all, turning 30 proved far less traumatic than one was led to anticipate.

From what I can tell, I’m doing many of the same things I was doing five or 10 years ago, AND I’ve got the income to afford it.

My network of friends and acquaintances is wider than it’s ever been. I’m still single, but I’m starting to get a better idea what kind of woman I actually like.

Time is precious, but my use of time has become so efficient that I accomplish in a day what took me two in my mellow mid-twenties.

My tastes are maturing, but only incrementally. I own an Xzibit CD and a pair of hip hop trousers. I can rap six bars without repeating myself.

Then again, I have been spotted at art exhibition openings, I’m busy reading a book on IT and globalisation and I shocked myself recently by joining an NGO, apparently of my own accord.

I spent a smelly weekend of rap-metal and campfire smoke at Splashy Fen, and still made it back to town in time for my Monday Pilates class.

I’m a mass of apparent contradictions.

I resurrected my DJ career recently and got a tattoo of four writing quills on my shoulder in the same week as my home loan got down to one-third paid off.

I defy you to categorise me.

In fact, even categories defy categorisation these days.

I’m a thirtysomething, but my circle of friends includes people in their teens and some in their 50s.

I know someone who’s 21 and married already. Then again my mate Gerald is 49 and he’s lived with 11 separate women in the course of his life and reckons he’ll never settle down.

My girl Shirley was lesbian for most of her 20s, but now she’s 35 and it looks like she might just have found Mr Right.

Tyrone and Clair have been living together since 1997 and they’ve got a lovely little girl, but they’re not getting married ‘coz they can’t afford it and they don’t see the point.

My other friend Leanne, a guidance counsellor, a got divorced at 40 and became a trance hippie.

My mom digs the Fugees. My boss listens to Blink 182, for crying in a bucket.

So tell me now, where are the categories?  What are these moulds we’re supposedly either fitting into, or breaking out of?

I don’t think they exist any more.

The 1950s study-work-marry-breed-retire-die model of living is of no relevance today. Freedom of thought and expression allows one to be whatever kind of person one wants to be at any time of one’s life – and sometimes many people all at once.

The idea of taking your parents’ life cycle as a template for your own is also outdated, especially with the revolutionised modern economy.

Extended dependence can mean you’re reliant on parents financially throughout your 20s nowadays and only reach self-sufficiency around 30.

A few decades ago, when you turned 20, your dad gave you a kick in the pants, a list of phone numbers and said "time to find a job". That was you – out in the big wide world.

Today, paying off a student loan, getting a decent job, buying a car and a house will take you at least 10 years.

So 30 is really becoming the new 20.

Especially since people are living longer and healthier, there’s a lot more of life too.

Where your first 20 years represented a third of your life, now it’s more like a quarter.

So in a way, 40 is the new 30, 30 is the new 25, the twenties are the new teens and teens are the new toddlers, if you follow me.

So if you think I’m going to have some kind of crisis of self-worth or a responsibility attack because I’m 30, you’re looking in the wrong place.

If there’s one skill I’ve picked up so far, it’s the knowledge of what I like and how to get it. I plan to employ this awareness to utmost effectiveness in the years ahead, with total disregard for any perceived norms or social pressure.

One third of my 30-year-old friends are married, several are divorced and the rest are single, so the peer pressure to get married is pretty weak.

Also, with medical advances and the accelerating teenagerisation of society, by the time I’m 40, 45 with be the new 30.

So at this rate I should be 29 till I die.