#33 On Turning 30

At 30 you finally start to catch up to those dreams you’ve been chasing for the last 10 plus years.
~Bonnidette Lantz

 I think it's obligatory to talk about it. It's a month away, but I've been thinking about how to make it count. I've been thinking about a lot of things.

When I was younger I used to drink a lot of wine, smoke pot in my apartment with my roommate, and create all sorts of ideas. I could invent anything. I could think of a book outline on the spot. I could create poems just with keywords; it became a game.

As I got older, I started to get distracted with conventional life. Having a boyfriend. Having a job. Getting promoted. Having my boss notice me. Quitting in a rage.

Getting another job. Moving. Going back to school to be a personal trainer. Getting married.  Doing married things like having PartyLite parties and running 1/2 marathons. I wanted to chase security down and hold it my prisoner. I was working at a great government job, my ex-husband was battling depression, and I was living for the weekend. I would allow myself to create extravagant things at work: filling a co-worker's cube full of balloons for her birthday, having a "ribbon cutting ceremony" to celebrate the new women's bathrooms on our floor, organizing pot-lucks and birthday parties and redecorating the front reception area. Did I mention we turned the office into a drive-in bat-cave, dressed up as self-created superheroes, and played black and white horror movies for Halloween?

And I was happy in those fleeing moments of creativity. I was doing well, I really was. And then I'd get home and get sucked into the TV. I'd cry myself to sleep wondering if this was all there was? Maybe I was happy? Is that was happiness was?

I had it all: check. check. check.

But I wasn't healthy. I would spend my time looking at diet plans on the internet, trying to find something that "worked". And by worked, I don't just mean made me thinner. I mean, made me happier and magical. Essentially, I wanted to turn into a unicorn and I didn't know how to do it.

So I left my life after a really trying few years. I blamed my partner. I think the words are, "you are like a big black hole if you don't want to help yourself, I can't sit here and watch you go down, because I'm going to go down with you."

If that's not love I don't know what is.

And the last year has been about revelling in some of those choices. This year is no longer about all the stuff that makes me sad.

"Happiness is just a positive perception from our brain. Some days you will be unhappy. Our brain is a tool we use. It’s not who we are." - James Altucher

I used to pride myself on being a happy person. I always thought that it was harder to go from being jaded back to innocent. So I put on rose-coloured glasses and hopped around until someone pushed at me and banged me and then I cried.

Somewhere in between the two there is a happy medium. The person who is happy, creating, pushing and moving forward. The person who can see the positive and doesn't care about the negative. But the one who calls bullshit when treated badly, instead of whimpering until an emergency is at hand.