Goodbye to 33

Another year, another birthday. Today I say goodbye to 33, something I didn't expect to be that hard; but something this past week really hit me, sending me spiraling down into a deep funk.

I remember my 30th birthday, and the lead up to that day. I was so excited to be leaving my 20s and entering the next decade of my life. A decade I felt was going to be the biggest for growth in so many ways. That has held fairly true so far, but now at almost the half way point I feel like time is just rushing by so fast.

These past few years with the pandemic has not helped by putting so many things on pause, but especially so this past 8 months. We bought our first house which for most couples is an exciting time. Don't get me wrong, it was an exciting time for us too, but it also meant living apart for a while due to several external circumstance I won't bore you with the particulars about. It's nothing scandalous I promise!

While living a part, both our careers have gone through some significant advancements. These are major milestones in our lives that I would have loved to share together. As a childless couple, our life milestones are more focused on our careers, connection with one another, and personal growth. Not that those are not milestones couples with children experience all the time as well, it is just that when you look at social media for our generation, the milestones people share and celebrate most often are around children and being a family with children. While I love seeing everything my loved ones share, I often struggle to feel connected to it because those are not things I celebrate in my life, and by conscious choice. Anyway, what I am trying to get at here is that not being there in person for these career milestones makes me feel the same way a parent feels for instance when they miss they child's first steps or school concert.

On top of this, we had two significant deaths in our family this past year. This has left me feeling like we are wasting time by being apart, when life is too short not to be together as much and as often as we can. All this just compounded together with the thought of mortality started to make me dread turning another year older. This brought on the deep funk I was talking about at the start of all this. For those that know me, know that is not a good place for me to be. With a long history of depression and anxiety, I have learned to recognize these moods pretty quickly and when I do I know I need to starting working on ways to get myself out of it.

So I took today off work to give myself a day just for me. No priorities, no responsibilities just whatever I felt like doing and that led me to here... creating a blog! I have always loved to write, I find it extremely therapeutic, but I have struggled to get that out there on the typical social media platforms and the idea of writing an entire novel is too daunting. I have started and stopped several times. As I said earlier though, I envisioned my 30s being about growth. This is my way of manifesting that, I am challenging myself to pursue this whole writing thing and I am going to give it an honest try and see what happens. What better day to start than on my birthday!

So this is me saying goodbye to 33 and hello to 34. We are going to make this a good year.