On the Eve of My Thirtieth Birthday

Tomorrow I turn thirty.
Holy smokes.

I can't decide if my thirties are going to be characterized by one-piece bathing suits and bags under my eyes, or if this is going to be my decade of hotness.

I'm really gonna shoot for the latter.

...which just reminded me of Chutes and Ladders, one of my favorite childhood games.

That moment when you land on space 28. Holla!

To my surprise, turning thirty has been a hard pill to swallow. This is the first birthday where I remember feeling trepidation. I'm pretty sad about leaving my twenties behind and panicked that each year seems to be moving faster and faster.

I took a class called "Life Stories" during the spring of my senior year of college. I also took Yoga and Golf that year, which might explain why I give Brian a strange look every time he mentions putting money into our son's 529 account.

I mean, is college really necessary?  You tell me.

(It was Advanced Yoga.)

Our final assignment in Life Stories was to write three essays about where we saw ourselves in ten years. We had to imagine three potential lives that were all different yet reasonable. Where were we living? What did we do after we woke up? Who were we with? What was on our nightstand? That sorta thing.

I think I wrote two really good essays. In one essay, I was single, and thirty, and living in good ole Mebane, North Carolina in a brick ranch house on Bason Road with my dogs and my truck, and working as an English teacher at the local high school.

In the second essay, I was single, and thirty, and living in Honduras and working as an English teacher abroad.

I must have really wanted to be an English teacher. And be single, apparently.

I can't remember my third essay, but knowing myself fairly well, I likely wrote something smart like "I died."

(Remember this was the spring semester of my senior year. Motivation was minimal.)

So those were my ideas of where I thought I would be back when I was a senior in college, but alas, here I am now and I am none of those things.

It was a great learning assignment because I learned I know nothing about what the next ten years will hold, and that even my best guess is a crapshoot.

It wasn't what I predicted, but my twenties were a blast.

As I enter into my thirties, my goals for this upcoming decade are to be more relaxed (a challenge when you have children, but doable) and to be more kind (always doable).

And just a final reminder for myself -

Don't waste good moods and sunny days.

Here's to this next decade. You have a tough act to follow.
So long, twenties.
It's been real. :)