Here Comes Thirty: What Is This Project?

A journal from turning thirty to navigating my way through the next ten years.

What is 30?

The big Three Oh. Feels like a significant marker of age, at least for my generation. 30 seems like the beginning of grown up adulthood. You’ve gone through most of the learning based changes — I’m in no way suggesting that I’ve stopped learning or growing as a person — that are forced on you, like: school, puberty, living on your own for the first time. Now, you have the rest of your adult life ahead of you and it’s up to you what you do with it.

Looking back, it seems to me that the first ten years of life are about physically growing and getting to grips with, well, everything. The second ten years, your brain turns upside down and your body tries to out-do the first ten years with even more changes — please tell me it wasn’t just me was thrown for a loop by this!

In the third ten years, your twenties, you settle into yourself, at least I did. But just as you begin to feel like you know your body, understand your mind, get your place in the world, it starts to feel like all the potential of youth is used up. Now, this is your lot. Hope you made good choices!

I don’t think that’s actually true, it feels that way though.

From experience, I’ve seen people go through significant changes in their 30s. Your 30s seem, at least to this 29 year old (for one more day), like the time when you get to do exactly what you want, not because you lack an awareness of consequences, or because of duty, or as an act of rebellion, but because you genuinely want to. That excites me.

29 Going On 30

Okay, so time to get really honest. Those are all the things I think I know about being in your 30s, but I have no idea what it’s like. You don’t know till you know, do you? I’ve been more reflective than usual in the last year, in part as it was time for me to do a lot of processing that I was avoiding, and in part as preparation for turning 30.

I didn’t want to start my 30s drifting along in a job that I was slowly being destroyed by, though was very lucky to have. I was living life seemingly in the moment, but very much haunted by my past, both the recent and the formative. Life seemed to be accelerating along and I was no longer able to keep up. Or, I could keep up and if I did at some point I was going to go flying off the end and take a serious tumble, the consequences of which I can’t be certain about. (I’m imagining someone running on a treadmill and comically going flying backwards as they lose their footing.) It wouldn’t have been good.

Which brings me to this: Project 30, Flirty & Thriving. I love a good project, I love plans and projects are serious sounding plans. When I began to really think about turning 30, I was reminded constantly of one movie: 13 Going On 30. If you’ve seen the movie, you already know that’s where I got this project’s name from. When I first saw the movie, I was young. It came out in 2014 so I must have seen it around then and been in my mid-teens. If you haven’t been treated to this wonderful treat of a film then here’s what you need to know:

A thirteen year old Jenna is being teased by her classmates and has few friends, save her best friend Matty. After a particularly cruel bit of teasing from the popular girls on her birthday, she makes a wish in a cupboard, inspired by a magazine cover that boasts the joys of being 30, flirty and thriving. That’s her mantra. Magic happens and she wakes up as a 30 year old Jenna, but with 13 year old Jenna’s mind and memories. At first, she thinks her life is amazing and she’s glad she skipped all those years, but then she begins to realise all the things that were important to her at 13, at her most hopeful, are gone. She doesn’t see her best friend, her job is amazing but her co-workers are scared of her. She’s become someone she doesn’t recognise as herself. She manages to put it all right and returns to her 13 year old self able to make the best decisions for her future, including making Matty, now Matt, and their friendship a priority.

So why name a blog this, why be inspired by that movie? I needed a snappy title and this worked. Kidding! Sort of. It’s short and sweet, but it also speaks to so much of the dialogue around becoming a 30 year old that I absorbed at that time. TV shows would have serious episodes about what Friends would do when they turned 30, where they would be and what they wanted to be doing. Mostly with a cloud of terror or overwhelming sense that it was all over post-30.

I can’t imagine skipping my twenties, I did so much, the good, the difficult and the unexpected. All those experiences made me into the person that I am today. And yet, I’m not exactly the same person. Thankfully I’m not my 13 year old self either.

When I imagine being that young or even thinking about what being 30 seemed like when I was growing up, there was often a goal driven sense that you had to be achieving and be ticking off this invented list of accomplishments, like a partner, property, high flying career. What is painfully apparent looking back is that none of those goals were happiness, though that was the assumed result of having met all these goals(?).

Those goals aren’t bad things, not if you want them. For the most part I do. What I’m not willing to do is sacrifice my mental health and happiness to achieve those goals. I have to find a way to get there without ruining the journey. I’ve grown a lot in the past year, and have no doubt there is more change ahead.

So that’s what this is. This is an account of the further growth in my 30s as I reach for my version of thirty, flirty and thriving.

Who Am I?

I’m going to be writing about being 30 as often or as rarely as I feel, letting life guide me. It won’t all be pretty and happy, but I really really hope that it will be, at least sometimes. I’d love for you to follow along, especially if you are in your 30s or heading up there. I also want to hear about how you’re dealing with it! What have you learned/realise?

To kick us off, here’s a little about me:

• I’m 29 and will be turning 30 by the time your read this, probably.
• Until a year ago I was working as a marketing manager, now I’m a freelancer who writes as much as possible in my free time.
• I stopped drinking alcohol at the start of the year and it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done — I’m not teetotal if I don’t want to be, but I’ve kind of wanted to be so far.
• I live in London, for now, and live on my own.
• I’m single and have been for a number of years

I’ll let you know a bit more about myself as we go along, and will likely explain how I got to this point with the above. All you need to know right now is that I’m happier than I’ve been in a long time and that I’m excited to see what my 30s hold for my work, my love and my life.