An Ode To Falling Asleep In Front Of A Basketball Game

In Defector's 2025 annual report, our business guy Jasper Wang wrote, "When we started the company, a big chunk of our staffers were in their 20s, bestowing large portions of our editorial output with the imprimatur of youth, but it turns out that every 28-year-old becomes 33 five years later, like clockwork. While we’ve frequently hired early-career writers in their twenties, our overall average age continues to inch upward, as everyone progresses interminably towards unc status." I laughed when I read this, because it's funny and true, and also because in the year and a half since I joined Defector at 28, I'd felt the long arc of my universe start it's inevitable bend towards uncdom.

There's the fact that in August, I hurt my back for the first time. In the months that have passed since I wrote about it, I've learned just how right one of the commenters was when they pointed out that nobody's ever said, I used to have back pain. But as I wrote then, I'd also never particularly enjoyed being young. Call it PTSD from skipping fifth grade, but I've long felt that being the youngest person in the room comes with too many expectations and none of the benefits of experience. There's something freeing about familiarity, a soothingness in routine.