On turning the Dirty Thirty

The face of a thirty year old optimist?

Well, here it is. The day I've been "dreading". My thirtieth birthday. (Cue the screaming...)

I remember being younger, maybe 15 or so, and looking at the people around me who were turning 30 and I remember them being much more mature than I am at this point. They seemed so "adult", doing "adult" things and so... old. And the thought of me ever hitting that age seemed unreal, like something my brain just couldn't compute. (Kind of like when you really sit and think that dinosaurs existed over 200 million years ago.) Obviously, everyone knows that unless they die, they will continue to get older but you know what I mean. You always think it's so far in the future. And when you're younger, time seems to go so slow. We can't wait to reach those age milestones - we hit double digit age years (I'm 10!!!), we can't wait to hit the teenage years (I'm 13!!!), we can't wait to get our license, to graduate, to vote, buy cigarettes and lottery tickets, beer at 21 and then... the last big thing we have after that is when our car insurance rates supposedly drop at 25. Hmmm.

For me, after 21 things just sort of seemed to speed up and the years started flying by. This could be related to the fact that I had a full time job and really just tried making it through the week. It seems life got so much about making it through the week and wishing my days would go faster that here I am, wondering how in the hell all this time flew by right from under me.

I guess I've accomplished what I needed to so far at this age. Things could be worse, I guess.

Maybe it's good to be on the young side of my 30's instead of on the old side of my 20's. Time to let go and move on. This is a new era. A whole new level. I think I'll tell myself anything at this point to stay optimistic and slightly amused.