My So-Called Life...After Turning 30

I turned 30 in May and celebrated in the most perfect way possible. I spent a fantastic weekend with BFFs in Texas (would I be anywhere else on my 30th birthday?) then came back to Florida to balloons at work, a bouquet of beautiful tulips and dinner at one of my favorite restaurants with my fiance.

I tossed around all these ideas about how I would blog about the big 3-0: "30 Things I've Learned Before Turning 30," "30 Things to Accomplish over the Next 30 Years," "30 Things About Me." But coming up with 30 of anything in one sitting is a daunting task, so I scratched that and wrote nothing. And really, turning 30 just felt like another year to me; physically I don't feel any different than I have over the last decade.

But I kept thinking back to an interview I read with Claire Danes (now you understand the title of this post) in the January issue of Glamour magazine in which she talked about life in her thirties. She said:

"I'm happier in my thirties...I was always looking forward to this time because people talk about it in very romantic terms. And I think it's true. Gravity hasn't had too profound of an effect, you're a little less emotionally gangly. The twenties are a deceptively challenging-slash-painful time. I'm just glad to be out of that phase."

I couldn't agree more! I think we're conditioned to believe that our twenties are when life is fun, exciting and playful. That may be true, especially in college, but there were plenty of downsides to that decade for me. And I don't think I'm alone. There was relationship drama, painful breakups, the stress of moving about a dozen times, anxiety over GPAs and GREs, making major decisions that would forever alter the course of my life, including where to go to graduate school and how to start my career, being away from my best friends, a job with more work and less pay then I could have ever imagined, and grad school loans...oh, the loans. (I'm still paying those off, but you get my point.)

I know the third decade of my life will bring a whole new set of challenges, but I feel like I'm starting it with a sense of calm and just a little more certainty. In that same Glamour interview, Claire Danes pointed out something else about this phase of life that I thought was so simple, yet so genius:

"A lot of the mysteries of life have been illuminated...this is the man I'm going to spend the rest of my life with. This is my son. This is my city. This is my home."

We spend so much of our younger life imagining and wondering about those big "What will my life look like?" questions. By 30 we know several of the answers, but not ALL of them, and that's what makes this stage so wonderful. I can only wait and see what amazing things the next 30 years will bring!