Countdown to my 30th

Tomorrow is the last day of the month meaning only one thing:  the countdown to my 30th birthday!  Arrrgh!  A little over a week away I will be marking the end of my twenties and ringing in the new era.  My thirties.  How did I come to this?!

Aging and encroaching onto another decade is a pretty daunting prospect.  To me, being a 30-something means suddenly you're an adult, you have to start acting grown up and look the part too.  I should be married and settled down with kids, comfortable in a well calved career and planning for my end days.  How depressing!

If that's what being in your thirties means then I've been put back a class to catch up.

Okay, it's not all bad.  I am kind of settled down.  I have my fiance, though admittedly, I am still awaiting from him the marriage proposal to actually materialise into the ceremony where I'm supposed to take his name.  Already I'm threatening him with a Don't Tell The Bride wedding.

I don't have the kids yet but I've got lots of animals to keep me busy and give my maternal hormones a test run.  (Don't tell that to the Other Half though, as much as I know he loves talking to the furries and feeding them their veggies, he can't stand people who call their pets their babies.)  It is a valid point.  Lucy the rabbit is still going to be pottering around her room in four years time (hopefully) and not waiting to go on to toddlers.  Or school.  Or whatever it is that kids go to when they grow out of being a baby.

The career... well, I should be grateful for anything that I do do because I should (and will never) forget what I've come from.  I started my twenties in a place I'm glad I'm far from.  That's something I can speak positively for moving onto the next decade, it's a new chapter.

As a 20-something I had a lot of growing up and self development to do that did literally set me back.  In my late teens I'd been attacked, suffered horrendously with the resulting agoraphobia, anxiety and depression and found myself barely able to move out of my bedroom let alone the house (and definitely never alone).  I carried this through my twenties where I somehow ended up at a point where I was able to see the other side of the hill, I was now coming back down from what was a hard slog.  I truly know that if it weren't for my Other Half I wouldn't have been able to take on my fears and get to where I am now.  I've had a scattering of fleeting jobs, but what the heck.  I've actually had jobs!  I was able to walk out of the door by myself, sit down in an interview and jolly well get it.  I even passed my driving test!  I may not have driven for a long while now because of my health, but it makes all the difference to know I can drive, I did all those tests on my own and passed both tests straight through.   I set up my own business trading online.  To think I rang people on my own, arranged meetings and deals.  I don't have it now but I did it, I tried.  Then I took part in a tv show, Brides on a Bus.  I was absolutely petrified about going without my Other Half.  Not only did I have to be apart from him for over a week straight but I had to fly on my own down to the very bottom of the country.  I'd never been on a plane before, let alone so far away from home on my own.  Whatever happened on the show and after doesn't matter.  I did it!

Now looking at it, turning 30 isn't so bad.  I may be a desperate thirty-something in a panic about work and kids and life, but I'm a thirty-something with a brighter future.  Who knows what I'll do and where I'll find myself in the next 10 years?!

Slice of pre-birthday cake, anyone?  :-)

Becky