Thoughts On Turning 30...

On the drive to my 30^th birthday dinner celebration, Jonathan asked me ‘how it felt’ to be 30. As a 29 year old, he hasn’t yet faced the number 30 and was curious about its emotional impact. I told him it felt the same. Perhaps because my birthday is being overshadowed by baby boy’s imminent arrival, I just haven’t given ‘turning 30’ much thought. 

He asked if I had everything I wanted by this point in my life and I answered yes. I guess I thought I might like to have an established career by now, but I don’t miss working and I don’t pine over all those mental health clients I’m not counseling. I guess all I ever wanted out of life was to be happy, and how that happiness came to me was irrelevant. 

All I ever dreamed of was a good man and a comfortable lifestyle, surrounded by good friends, enhanced by travel, and hopefully with a kiddo or two joining our family along the way. Well...I have all that. 

I guess I thought by the time I was 30, I’d be done having kids. But I probably came up with that arbitrary timeline when I was 22 and thought 30 was much older than it actually is. I don’t regret waiting until 30 to have children. I had my 20s all to myself, and now it’s time to focus my life on someone else. 

I think what can make turning *30* difficult, is how fresh *20* still feels in our minds. I remember it like it was yesterday. A song comes on the radio and I am instantly catapulted back to life as a Junior at LSU. 

It doesn’t feel like 10 years ago. Does time pass that quickly? When I turned 20, my life as a 10 year old seemed so far away, like that decade of my life had inched by at a snails pace. But yet, at 30 years old, I can still remember exactly what it was like to be 20 and that girl doesn’t seem all that different from me. Sure, she had a higher tolerance for alcohol, functioned much better on 3 hours of sleep and was a tad boy crazy, but she was still me. I recognize her and relate to her and sometimes, I miss her. 

I could easily fall back into a life of Final exams and sorority formals and LSU tailgating from dawn til dusk. If I time warped back to 2003 and woke up one day to find the last 10 years had all been a dream, I think I’d jump right back in to life as a 20 year old and rock it. 

But yet, I don’t want to. Yes it was fun and I felt alive and every day brought promises of endless possibilities. Yes my skin was fabulous and I looked great in a bikini and I thrived as a student. 

But I wasn’t any happier then than I am in this moment. I don’t miss having my heart broken or breaking others’ hearts or waking up for 7:30 am math classes or stressing about money. I don’t miss the drama of sorority life or rebound relationships. 

Each stage of life has it’s time and it’s place. I was a pretty awesome 20 year old. I don’t have many regrets because somehow every choice and mistake I made in the past 10 years led me here. And at 30 I am blessed with a good man. 

A comfortable lifestyle. 

Surrounded by good friends. 

With abundant travel opportunities. 

And a kiddo on the way. 

So it turns out, I make a pretty great 30 year old as well. So here’s to a new adventurous decade, one for which I won’t set any other goal for myself than this: to be content and grateful and open minded and unafraid of leaving my comfort zone. If I can manage to accomplish those things, I think that at 40, I’ll look back at the past decade and think, “I did just fine.”