By the time i am thirty

Look back in clarity

2009-01-03T09:05:00.000-08:00

Anyone else out there a bit scared of (shhh) thirty?
Perhaps, I have decided, it is far worse in the anticipation than the doing of the thing.
Thirty will be grown up. My thirties will be years of sorted-ness and certainty, after these twenties of finding my way around.
I am old enough for nostalgia now.
I can feasibly and with authority look back on things. Is that a good thing? And I have the wisdom of age, to see oh-so-clearly the places where I went wrong.
Children - who are not that at all but probably way into their twenties - look young and wear hardly anything and drink too much. And were once me...

Time flies

2008-12-22T12:40:00.000-08:00

Eleven months until i am thirty.
Eleven months left of my twenties.

The second sentence seems scarier.

Once I get there it will be fine, I'm sure...

Counting down!

Universal truths

2008-12-20T12:08:00.000-08:00

Before I was Nearly 30, I kept coming across stories of (mainly) women, who in the run up to 30 were quitting things, changing things, starting businesses, moving to the country, ditching the wrong man or the wrong job. I started asking people who were 30 or nearly 30, and the story was the same. 30 is an issue.

So I started this blog.

The best story I heard of all was this:

A friend of a friend has just turned 30. Every single morning, when she wakes up, she thinks: "Shit, I'm 30".

Hmm, not just me then worrying about the big 3-0.

Not so bad after all

2008-12-19T11:03:00.000-08:00

Blog fatigue, but now hopefully receding. Blame age. Can blame age for anything and everything now. Handy. First time that has happened.

Looking over the London skyline at night. Don't know where else I might live by the time i am thirty. Maybe don't need to change anything at all. Maybe instead need to just appreciate it. And slow down, as age won't keep allowing for such mayhem (or will it?).

Have been looking on 43 things. Everyone wants to do the same - write a book, quit their jobs, learn a language.

Need to start a list.

List
Take more photos (to look back on at 80).

To be continued...

In a whirl

2008-12-13T06:51:00.001-08:00

Make mince pies. Put up Christmas decorations. Ice skating. Drink champagne. Eat. Sleep. Survive office party. Look at lights everywhere on Christmas trees. Book train ticket. Answer party invitations. Start buying presents. Get annoyed by Christmas music in shops and vow to spend as little time in shops as possible. See people carrying Christmas trees. Wonder about deadline for posting Christmas cards. Write blog.

Time travel

2008-12-07T04:32:00.000-08:00

Mulled wine at a 30th birthday party last night.
Getting (now old) friends back together has to be one of the best things about celebrating a decade. 30 is old! But walking into a curry house it felt like someone had pressed rewind, and there we were as students when we all first met.
Things have changed a lot with the addition of jobs, cars, houses, husbands, wives and babies.
We can’t drink as much, and the conversation can turn alarmingly to DIY and house prices rather than student misdemeanours.
But I would rather be here than there. And the old jokes live on, absolutely relevant after more than 10 years.

Anything goes on the slopes

2008-12-03T05:24:00.000-08:00

Dancing on a table in my ski boots, I feel young. In fact, I feel ageless.
The Austrian bar is packed with skiers who have come in off the Ischgl slopes to party. And anything goes.
We all do a dance with actions resembling heads, shoulders, knees and toes. The words say something about as being as strong as a tiger, as tall as a giraffe, and swimming. What is not lost in translation is that everyone is letting go.
I look around and there are people ten, twenty, thirty years older than me punching the air. Being lost in the moment together. It is a good thing to do by the time I am thirty. I hope I am still there at 59.

The new me

2008-11-25T14:13:00.002-08:00

There was lots of cake. And lots of candles.
Birthdays rock.
Shame I won’t get another one for a whole year.
It made me look forward to my 30th.
We sang Happy Birthday and I blew my candles out three times; first with a friend I hadn’t seen for nearly a year, secondly with a fellow nearly-30-er who had baked me a (tasty, tasty) cake, and thirdly with my nearest and dearest while drinking sparkling rosé.
The next day, aimlessly changing radio channels, I began listening to Radio 2.
My slowly ticking brain registered approval.
A motto for my year so far: more Radio 2, less rosé.

Urgh

2008-11-23T10:30:00.000-08:00

Hangovers, presumably, will be even more painful by the time I am thirty.

Happy Birthday to me

2008-11-22T06:34:00.000-08:00

Hi, I’m Nearly 30.
In fact, 29 today.
Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday to me...
In one of my birthday cards it says: “Enjoy the last year of your 20s”.
Yikes. How did I get here of all places!?! What have I been doing with my time!?!
Obviously, by the time I toast 30 years on this earth I will be (delete depending on mood) rich and famous/a home owner/settled down in a grown-up way.
Won’t I?!?
Suddenly there seems quite a bit to do.
But surely it’s OK. I’ve got a year to go, after all. I thought I might tell my story here.
By the time I am thirty who knows what it might say.
Thirty, it seems, makes you stop in tracks you’ve been aimlessly and happily meandering along, and check what is going on.
I don’t remember turning 10. I probably had a My Little Pony cake and a swimming party.
I don’t remember turning 20. I probably had too much to drink.
But neither of those ages really mattered. At ten you don’t care about much beyond birthday cake, and at 20, the focus is on a year later, when you’re just happy to be a proper adult.
So I figure that this is the first real test.
T-h-i-r-t-y.
By the time I am thirty, maybe I will have conquered the world, or at least New York.
I might be able to cook lasagne, which I always figure I’ll be able to do when I’m a grown up.
Unquestionably, 30 is that.
But not yet! I’m 29! 29!
Time to light the candles and eat cake…