Notes to Myself on the Morning of my 30th Birthday
Today, on this morning of my 30th birthday, where my visions of “who I want to be by the time I’m 30” and “who I actually am at 30” collide in a rather ungraceful but coincidentally fortuitous manner, I vow to spend the next year being a badass.
I vow to not just show up in the moment, but to push beyond it in ways that will surprise myself. To not just finally repot the damn plant, but to turn my studio into jungle of a greenhouse for the afternoon in order to do it right even if it means I’ll be vacuuming up stray dirt three weeks later. To allow myself to surrender fully to the fact that gray is my favorite color (thanks K), and let go of the notion that it’s dull or wrong or just so…gray. To not spend an hour wondering if this post is “good” enough to publish, but to sit awkwardly and comfortably with the fact that it is, because I decided it is.
I vow to say “I love you” to myself more often, and to my people, and let myself believe and feel it when I do.
And I vow to cling to fact that every way in which I failed to become “who I want to be”— the texts I knew better than to respond to but did anyway, the day I lost my phone and allowed the my grace to crumble very unpoetically around me, the time I forgot to bring money with me to a first date—were really all just life’s way of throwing me a sly wink because I cannot envision a more fulfilling reality than the one in which I find myself sitting this morning. I’m lucky. Old and lucky.