"It is true, it is real, it is me, it is not me, it is horrible, and I love it."

The DVD set of "thirtysomething" has finally arrived. Do you dare relive the horror of your long-ago attachment to it?

And I do mean you, not we. I was one of the many people who rejected the show — and I was thirtysomething at the time. That show was certainly not me, though I suppose it actually was, and perhaps that what put off. I was married, then teetering on divorce. I had little children, a new career, and angst about unmet aspirations from the previous decade.

The author of the linked piece, Porochista Khakpour, was in grade school at the time, and she used the show to get a grip on what it meant to be an adult. (She had rejected her parents, Iranian immigrants — "fallen aristocrats" — as role models.) Now, of course, she actually is thirtysomething:

... I find myself torn between the decadent counterculture of my 20s and a desire for things “properly” adult. And this is the very no-man’s-land paralysis that “Thirtysomething” was obsessed with, that cold-sweat-panic moment when youthful rebellion runs headlong into the responsibilities, pains and joys of full-blown adulthood.

In this second-chance viewing as a thirtysomething, I am amazed and inspired by all the everything-in-between, all the nothing-happening, all the ambivalence and the stagnation.

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Link to buy the DVD.