HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!

So this year is  a “milestone” birthday for me. One I wasn’t ready to deal with. I looked at my professional life, my love life, and decided “Hmm, turning ___ years old? Naw. Not yet.” I  am just having a hard time trying to accept it. You know that moment when you process your new age and what it means and you reflect on that? I WANT TO TOTALLY SKIP THAT PART.   Though the reality is, now, I’m a whole ‘nother year older than the age I turned last year, but I still haven’t turned that age yet. So basically, I am all screwed up in the head. More than usual.

(SIGH)

I’m either going to keep rolling with the age I turned in 2006 for another year or take on my 2009 one. But this 2011 one? Oh no, hell no. Ain’t happening. The last thing I need right now is to go another hour forward on my biological clock (I am hitting the snooze button with a sledgehammer until my Jet wedding, even though the buzzing is getting louder), nor do I need to play “Well, what was so-and-so doing at this age?” or “Why is such-and-such 35 and this far ahead in the life game?” or “When is my passion going to become a career and not a secret side hustle?”

It’s an awkward time of life for me. It’s the crisis before the mid- life crisis: grown, but still a lot of growing to do. Scratching the surface of the lives we want, but still not planted firmly where we’re trying to be. Caught between being ready for families and relishing freedom, while managing the fact that the former is not hardly promised and the latter, quite overrated at times.

Though all jokes aside

My meandering thoughts on turning 3+++++?:

I’ve concluded that most of the commenters on the blog are in their 20s and 30’s. And I largely base that theory on the way turning 35 is viewed as the end all of life. Like if you haven’t found a husband, a career path, bought a house, popped out a kid, finished school or any other so-called markers of adulthood by the time you’re 34 and 264 days, you might as well just call it a wrap and settle for life’s consolation prize. Every thing that matters is just oh-vah for the next 50-60 years once anyone, but especially a single woman, falls off the twenty-something cliff.

A cheating man? Hell no at 25, but okay at 35.

Not married at 30? Give up.  Not married at 35? You’ll be single forever.

Ain’t got a prospect by 30? (love yourself)…..Ain’t got a prospect by 35? L-O-S-E-R!

35 (sigh)……..

Gosh. Sounds… old, huh? Just a lil. LOL.

I know I don’t look my age. Last time I hit the beach, some college boys tried to kick it to me. They looked like babies. Asked to sit by my blanket. Nah, boo. A bassinet is a better look. I feel old sometimes though. Don’t quite get over colds the way I once did and sometimes my knee is achy after a good run or bench lunges. Got some grey hairs too. I don’t even bother coloring them. Such is life.

At some point in this life time I will gradually accept the realization that I am actually over 30.  It’s just that I don’t feel old. Matter of fact, I don’t even feel grown. Don’t feel like I’ve arrived, still got a-ways to go on my path. But I can see the destination. It’s still on a hill, but I’m not looking from the bottom of the valley anymore. I can carve a clear path if I stay focused.  The good in my life outweighs the bad.  I’m happy, I’m able, and I’m breathing…