30

Tomorrow, I turn 30.

It’s exciting.

People keep asking me how I feel about it.

I don’t quite know what to say.

Apart from the fact I am excited.

There’s more hype when the clock ticks over and you enter a new decade. It’s more of a big deal. Even though it’s very likely that you feel the exact same as you did the decade earlier.

And I do feel the same. Truth be told, I still feel 17.

Well, maybe 17 is a stretch. When I was 17 I was starting University. I don’t feel the same as I do then. I probably feel more like 22.

22. That was a good year.

Actually, all of my years have been good years.

I keep thinking that maybe 30 should be a bigger deal for me. That there should be some clearing out and reinventing and some serious life changes.

But I’ve kind of done all that, to a degree. I like to clear out and reinvent regularly, so as to avoid big life overhauls. I try to work towards being a better version of myself everyday. Not just on grand occasions.

It’s kind of nice to enter a new decade feeling relatively sorted. Without stress or anxiety. Quietly content.

I’ve made a life for myself – one filled with love, good people, a job made up of work that never feels like it, tear-inducing laughter more than is probably necessary and a sense of purpose – a life that I wake up every day chomping at the bit to get stuck into. None of that needs reinventing. I don’t want to clear any of it out.

I will approach 30 with the same attitude I approach any birthday, new year or Monday; with a promise to grab life by the balls and live like I mean it.

Tomorrow I will wake up next to the man that I love. I’ll plant kisses all over my little boy, who is so incredibly perfect it sometimes hurts. I’ll have breakfast and a coffee and walk my dogs through the hills. I’ll venture into the city with O and soak in the Melbourne sunshine while we meander the streets, stopping to watch buskers or the trams. We’ll play at the park for a while. Maybe we’ll pop into the library. Or a Musica Viva concert. Maybe we’ll just be for a while. And there’ll be calls from the people I love and kisses from family and the opening of presents and the excitement of my birthday party mere days away and I will probably sit back at some point and think, ‘well, isn’t this lovely.’