I’ve got a big birthday coming up in two weeks. It sucks. The big 3-0… and let me tell you, I am deep in crisis mode.
Up until a couple weeks ago, I was actually looking forward to turning 20+10. My 20s have been fun yet challenging, though not always in the good way. Unstable might be a better term. As like many others, I spent the last decade trying out various careers, residences, friends, boyfriends, and states of emotional well being. I went through periods of wanting to be a television producer, a nightclub DJ, a singer/songwriter, a business manager and a nonprofit executive, before focusing on what I knew to be true all along – that I should write. It took a bunch of little steps, trial and error, and a couple major moves to reach a point where I love my friends, what I do and where I live (for the most part… I’d love to move out of Los Angeles at some point).
But out of no where, I started to feel that pressure, the one I thought that I, of all people, would skip over. The oh-my-gosh-I’m-turning-30-and-haven’t-done-anything-with-my-life pressure. In essence: I don’t make as much money as I thought I would by now, I’m not married and don’t have kids. I’m not anywhere close to starting to write a best selling novel, I still rent and I can’t stick to my budget for the life of me.
Yeah, that about sums it up.
By no means do I have a dismal outlook on my 30s – hell, life begins at 30, right? – but I can’t help thinking that I should’ve had at least some of that figured out by now. I know that what I’m feeling is normal and that the self-doubt will pass but I am faced with questioning what more I want out of this life.
I’ve completed the Ideal Life section of my YSN portfolio, so I know what’s important to me: vacations in Italy, a house by a beach, a writing job that allows me to work from home a few days a week, a husband, children and enough money so that I don’t have to worry about it too much. But at this moment I am extremely aware that I will continue to experience even more of those little steps, trials and errors, and major moves that I made in my 20s in order to take me closer to my Ideal Life and… oh God, into my 40s.
Crisis averted? Not so much…
