Thirty, Flirty and Thriving.

So I turn 30 today. I love birthdays (other people's as well as my own) so even if I like to joke about losing my desirability or being officially old, the big 3-0 isn't really that big of a deal to me. I do like celebrations, reflections, milestones and round numbers—and since my birthday falls on the last day of August, it's always felt like a goodbye to summer, which means fall is coming and who isn't happy about that?

I recently revisited this silly list I made when I was but child at the age of 27, and found that, as of today, I have accomplished 13 out of the 30-by-30 goals I had set for myself. Some of the accomplishments were big ones (moving to New York, going to Europe), others were easier but even more wonderful than I imagined (Newport, Sleepy Hollow, Cat Power), and others are things I can keep on chipping away at (trying new foods, paying off my student loan debt).

It's interesting to look back and see how much I've changed in just three short years—I no longer think marriage and kids are in the cards for me, and I'm totally ok with that. My life barely resembles the one I had three years ago, and that's ok too. I'm definitely getting more patient in my old age, and I know that whatever my life is like in the next three years—or even in the next thirty—it will be wonderful because I have that choice. There will be heartbreak and heartache, disappointments, failures, steps forward and steps backward. But I've learned in my 30 short years on this planet that I can take the high road. That my own life improves when I'm kind to others. That you can't avoid hurting people, but you can try your best to limit that hurt. That I just don't feel right with long hair. That I'll always hate cilantro, and people will always argue with me about it. That life is messy and annoying and complicated and hard, but then I bite into a perfectly ripe peach or Meryl Streep waves at me and I know that it's all so, so worth it.

As silly and at times misguided as that list was/is, it's still nice to be able to look back on how I felt at a particular moment in my life. I'm not going to make another list, but that doesn't mean I don't have goals—most of which involve travel of some sort. I want to go back to Europe, but there is so much to see in the States. I've planned some very epic road trips that hopefully become realities quite soon, but when I think of my current life, there's not much about it that I would change. Of course it will change—and so will I—but that's all part of the fun.