This is the Year I turn 30, and I don’t feel as scared as I thought I would. For a long time I felt an immense amount of pressure to do it all in my twenties. I wanted to be have it all figured it by the time I turned thirty, and thought if I didn’t I would just spiral. I even had a typical 30 before 30 list hanging over my head, and the whole thing was making me feel like a failure, and feeling like a failure for not completing a list I made in my early twenties when I was a much different person, is not how I wanted to bring in the new year.
Like most people I spent the last part of 2021 thinking of want I wanted my 2022 and beyond to look like. 2022 being the year I hit the big Three Zero, I wanted to embrace it instead of dread it. I’m starting a new decade, I just started a new book, purchased my first home and there’s a lot of things that I am capable of doing mentally and finically that just was not a possibly in my twenties and I want to lean into the freedom of that. My list was pretty cliché and while I did accomplish some major things on it. I knew with less than six months until my birthday, there was no way I could do them all, and when really considering what was left on the list. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to do them or if I just thought I should because I read somewhere that I should.
Functioning under the false belief that if I didn’t have it figured out by 30 that my life would fall apart had me feeling of thirty as an ending. An ending to the my “Fun twenties”, when I would have to be more serious because life would suddenly get serious. Well living through my husband’s cancer and a pandemic has taught me life can get serious at any moment. That means that while there are very likely more serious times ahead with the pandemic still going strong, my mother’s changing health, and the all of the nightmare scenarios that come with owning a home. There will also be fun and happy times to look forward too. I want this time to be a montage of books, love, writing and growth. I want to be able to look back at this time with a sparkling anime filter, through millennium pink rose colored glasses.
So, in no particular order here is my 30X30 list. A list of 30ish things I want to do in my thirties. Yes this is kind of my new year resolution, but without the timeline of 365 days. Instead I have the next decade making sure I take time to devote to some things that I will enjoy and that will enrich my life.
- Buy a Home/Make a Home
- Start a Youtube/Channel
- Write a Book/Get a Book Published
- Quit my Day Job
- Get a Cat
- Have a Stellar Wardrobe
- Bra Length Hair
- Run a Dungeons and Dragons Campaign
- Design a Ready to Wear Collection
- Create an Art Collection
- Design a House
- Design a Video Game
- Write a Graphic Novel
- Write a Pilot Episode
- Travel
- Drive a Boat
- Prefect a Dessert Recipe
- Take Ballet Class
- Take a Boxing Class
- Attempt Motherhood
- Experience a Lavish Spa Day
- Do every Holiday
- Get a Tattoo
- Read 300 Books
- Find a Hill to Die on
- Bungee Jump
- Learn to Surf
- Go Parasailing
- Start a Business
- Learn to Fly a Plane
- Perfect some Acrobatics
- Be a proper Plant mom
- Get an Exercise Routine
So there’s my list. I’m so excited to get to look back on this decade like a really good coming of age story, without all of the angst that plagued my teenage years or the insecurities that haunted my twenties. I’m thinking of the way I idealize being a teenager when I was a pre-teen, and how I wanted so bad to be a teenager and live the life of a Disney channel kid. Then going through that again when I was 18 and feeling like my twenties would be some magical Living Single adventure. I’m viewing this next decade through that enchanted lens and I want to document that here. Whenever I start or make progress on anything on this list I’ll document it here, both the good and the bad. I’m really excited for my thirtieth year, the new adventures on the horizon and whatever else the next decade throws at me, I hope ya’ll will tune in and check out my progress. Thank you for tuning into this one see ya’ll in the next one.
