This week, I turned 33. Back when I turned 30, I wrote about my thoughts on the difference between life in your twenties and life in your thirties. The thoughts still seem applicable at age 33, so I'm going to post them as a #ThrowBackThursday blog. Without further ado...
I am freaking out about turning 30 tomorrow, so I thought I would write about it. According to the New York Times magazine, "Sociologists traditionally define the “transition to adulthood” as marked by five milestones: completing school, leaving home, becoming financially independent, marrying and having a child.” I hit all those milestones in my twenties (squeezing out the last one, literally, in the last few months of the decade), so I’m not freaking out because I feel like I’m behind on my life journey. I also am not freaking out because I’m dissatisfied with my life. Even though things are challenging on a day-to-day basis right now because of the demands of a special needs newborn, I wouldn’t trade my husband or my baby or (most of) my general life experiences for anything. I think I’m freaking out because you are so carefree in your twenties and you get to have the *big decisions* in life ahead of you. By your thirties, it’s not like you’re locked into everything forever, but many of your decisions (who will I marry? what will my career be? where will i live?) have been made. Also, the thirties are notoriously a grind decade where you put in the investment work that will make things really good for the rest of your life. So if you want to have a family with multiple kids, you will raise babies and young children during this decade. If you want to have a fruitful career, you will be putting in long hours at the office while still towards the bottom of the pay scale and prestige ladder. As a woman, you’ll be trying to figure out how to balance family and work, which are both at the height of demandingness in this decade. So I think that’s what I’m nervous about.
[I edited out several long paragraphs about life in my twenties mostly because they would only be interesting to me. They basically describe that I got an education, traveled, made some good friends, make some dumb mistakes at a time when the stakes were still pretty low, and started my career.]
My musings on the thirties above sounded a little grim, so I want to end on positive note. It’s not a bad thing that many of my big life decisions have been made, it’s just a change. When things are a known quantity, you can direct all your energy towards getting good at those things. I know who I will spend my life married to, so I can enjoy the particular blessings that come with this man and work on the challenges that we have in our specific marriage. I know that I have invested lots of time and money into going to law school and I have already been fortunate to have 2 law jobs that I really liked, so I can work to get good at those type of jobs (once I get back into the workforce). I know myself somewhat better than I did at the beginning of my twenties, better know some of the things I need to work on, and I also know some of the things I’m good at. I’m sure getting to know yourself and improving yourself is a lifelong process, but I am now one decade closer. Cheers to 30!
Post-script: Savvy readers will note that a scant three years later, we have already shown that our "big life decisions" are still in flux. We moved from Reno to Virginia Beach and Kenny changed jobs from a corporate law firm to teaching law (which within the legal field is a major switch). I NEVER would have predicted either of these changes at the time I wrote these original thoughts. So while I think the general idea of this blog is true - as you get older, your life becomes more about attempting to become excellent at the things your life consists of rather than figuring out what exactly your life will be - we have also seen that life is unpredictable and it's important to retain some flexibility, knowing that life will throw you some curve balls.
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