Then Suddenly It's Almost a Decade Later...

Last night I couldn’t sleep. For obvious reason (COVID-19) I have had a bit of general anxiety and sleeplessness lately, but last night wasn’t even about the pandemic. In a few days I will be 39. Yes, I just typed that out loud. Thirty-Nine. I remember turning 29 which was even harder than turning 30. I think after our 20’s the last year in a decade is scarier and somehow feels older than when you start all over again in the new decade. Like…well, I was an old 20 something, but now I am a young 30 something! It’s like you are the newest member of a whole new club. The same must come with turning 40 I’m guessing. I tossed and turned before falling asleep like I do before every birthday reflecting on my life and how fast it is going and how it hasn’t quite turned out as I expected. To be clear, I am not complaining. I have an amazing life, and so much to be thankful for, but I’ll be honest with you, my 30’s were actually pretty anticlimactic. Last night I was trying to place a finger on why I felt so lackluster about the past decade, while being shocked that it was so quickly drawing to an end. This is what I realized…in my 20’s I did so much. The 10 years between 20 and 30 were packed with endless adventures, love, and exciting challenges. I graduated from college, moved to New York City, and started my dream career in theater. I lived in Osaka, Japan, and travelled the world on a cruise ship and a tour bus. I met my first core group of good friends in my new post Alaska life that were exciting and passionate and heading towards big dreams just like I was. Dating was easy in my 20’s. I had a few wonderful relationships with amazing men that I loved very much, and in between those relationships I had lots of fun dates. Dating was never my problem in my 20’s, like it has been in my 30’s. People who don’t live in NYC say to me all the time, “how can it be so hard to date in New York, there are so many people!” Oh don’t worry, that’s an entire blog post on it’s own “Dating in NYC and Why it’s Hell”.

When I turned 29 I freaked out, but when I turned 30 I was actually excited about my future. I felt strongly that my 30’s would be the decade I would settled down, meet a nice man, get married and have a couple of kids. It was crazy and scary to think that way, but it was also comforting and felt like the right “time”. I was hopeful that my new career path outside of theater would lead to stability and even launch me into new passions and dreams (and in a way it has), and I was ready for this whole “adulting” thing that I had heard so much about, and seen so many other friends do. Well…I’m about to be 39 in 8 days and none of that happened. I’m single and childless with no prospects for dating anytime soon, especially not now with this deadly virus plaguing the world (I think we all agree that this is all so unreal and we feel we are living in a sci-fi movie). Even after this is all over, and hopefully it is soon, who wants to date strangers? I’m thinking the PTSD from this will last at least a year. Don’t get me wrong, I have had some amazing times in the last decade. If you have read my earlier blog posts, you will know that my new career in hospitality really opened up a new world showing me all the amazing things about living in NYC, and of course I’ve made more wonderful friends. In general though, this decade did not go as planned. Here’s what I learned in my 30’s….I learned about myself, which is something I had never had the maturity or courage to do in my 20’s while I was too busy flitting around the world on crazy adventures. When I was about 33 I made a commitment to myself and started seeing a therapist. People joke about the fact that New Yorkers have someone to help them with everything, trainers to help them work out, nannies to help watch their kids, nutritionists to keep them on track, and every kind of doctor you can imagine, including a therapist. I have yet to meet a true New Yorker who doesn’t have (or at least has had) one. It’s pretty essential in this city in order to survive. I went to therapy for 5 years, some months less frequently, nevertheless, over the years I kept my commitment to myself and kept going. I wanted to work through all the feelings of failure I was facing by not living the exact life I had planned out for myself (sound familiar?). I wanted to discover who I was and really learn and explore what I wanted out of life. I loved therapy and I recommend to everyone. I learned so much about who I am, where I come from, and what affects me. It was a scary, painful and amazing process. It’s funny but as I write this I am realizing that maybe my 30’s weren’t so dull, they were just different? I mean, I was no longer picking up and moving to a new exciting place every year. My 30’s were spent here in NYC. I lived here almost the entire decade. For the first time in a long time I stayed put in this city and I made a commitment to myself that I was going to go through the process of learning who I really am and what I really want. A couple years ago my job ended unexpectedly. I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to temporarily live out a dream I had been thinking about. I flew to Greece to find myself (my own version of “Eat, Pray, Love”), but when I got there, I realized the same feeling of restlessness quickly found me. I came home two months later and explained the feeling to my therapist. His advice to me was to stay still. He said it is only when I remain still and stop escaping for more adventure that I will discover what I really want in life. He was right. I learned more about myself in those 5 years than I had my entire life. It’s amazing what growing up will do. So the last 9 years have been a bit of a let down compared to the expectations I had for myself at the age of 30. I am not where I thought I would be. I don’t have the children, or the husband, in fact I have zero prospects of that even happening anytime soon, but what I do have is wisdom. I have maturity and growth, and that would have never happened if I had kept moving and hiding behind my exciting life. These past 9 years, I have tried and failed, and tried and failed, and each time I have failed, I have made a commitment to myself to learn and grow from that failure so that the next time I’m given an opportunity I know what to do better. This is what I have spent the past (almost) decade learning. I guess that’s not a decade wasted after all is it?

“Of all the roads she travelled, the journey back to herself was the most magnificant”

— SD (@peacefulmindpeacefullife)