The topic of turning 30 in 1.5 years came up over dinner with a bunch of my girlfriends last night.  It’s a topic that’s coming up all too frequently these days, though I imagine it will get even worse in, say, 0.5 years.

For better or worse, it’s major life milestones like turning 30 that make you question where you’re going, and if you’re ever going to get there.  My bunch of girlfriends and I are in that place of wondering if whatever it is we intend to be is something we’ll actually become. If that doesn’t make sense then you probably already have a career. 

Part of our situation is a uniquely entertainment industry situation (NY, LA or otherwise). My friends who went to medical school are doctors. My friends who got jobs in accounting are accountants. If you pick a discipline that has certain requirements for entry and you complete the requirements (correctly), you enter.

Not the case for some of us at the dinner table the other night.  One among these friends – for example – is a wildly talented actress who’s still wondering if she’s going to become an actress. She has acted in dozens and dozens of impressive things, but there is a level at which you are solely supporting yourself as an actress, and one at which you are not.  I may write things (some of which people pay for), which I still wonder if and when I’ll actually be a writer.

My actress friend has decided to take things in a different direction based on this whole 28.5-year-old quandary. On account of age, the general state of the economy, and her desire to contribute more to the world that auditions allow, she’s trying out a 9-5 life. Right now it’s exploratory: is this something she’ll find more fulfilling that acting? It is something she can do in tandem? What will it be like to work inside a cubicle?? But she feels like this move might save her from ending up in a place she doesn’t want to be at, say, 1.5 years from 40.

…Which is how we got to the topic of Sad Jon Hamm.

Jon Hamm is my eternal go-to when the topic turns to, “will I ever make it.” The now iconic MAD MEN lead spent years and years as a working actor with very few credits before he landed the role that changed his life. Jon Hamm proves that it can be done, and there are dozens of him in Hollywood.

So I gave my friend my Jon Hamm speech when she brought up putting acting on the backburner to explore something far more stable.

“Yeah,” she said, “that’s true, but there are probably a lot of Sad Jon Hamm’s out there who didn’t get Jon Hamm’ed, and I don’t know if I can be a Sad Jon Hamm.”

(Then another friend said, “Sad Jon Hamm is an amazing twitter handle,” which is something one person says at one point in most conversations these days.)

By Sad Jon Hamm she doesn’t mean, “people who never made it,” she means, “people who discovered they couldn’t handle not making it, but it was too late to do something else.” Some people can do a 180 at 35, 45, 55, 60-years-old and be fine with whichever way the cookie crumbles, others cannot, and they’re certainly not to blame.

“I think I might be a Sad Jon Hamm-type,” she said. “I don’t know if I have it in me to put all my eggs in this basket and not make it in some way, shape or form.” 

Can you know if you’ll end up a Sad Jon Hamm before it happens? “They” say that if you really want to succeed you have to put all your eggs in one basket and then run that basket to wherever it is baskets of eggs go to become careers. But at 28.5-years- old is it smarter to diversify your life skills?