Welcome to the Club! Thoughts on being 30…for a week, LOL!

Since I have turned 30, I have heard “welcome to the club” a lot.  I feel very welcomed. 

While we all know there isn’t an actual club for people who turn 30, or maybe there is and I just haven’t been invited, I will say that our society expects that when an individual turns 30, that they should be ready to apply all the useful lessons from their twenties and start their triad decade with self-refining habits.

If I were to assess myself according to that criteria…I’d have to say I’m doing pretty good (I know “well” is supposed to be used instead of good, but allow me a colloquialism). Let’s also keep in mind that my self-assessment is biased and  I have only been 30 for exactly a week .What I will say, is that I have been trusting what I know to be true and how I’m feeling a lot more. I’m not sure why I’m feeling a renewed or stronger sense of self-trust now that I’m 30.   Some of it may be rooted in the fact that I’ve had a substantial amount of time learning myself and can vet the decisions that I make with justifiable experiences. I feel really confident, and this has been evident in small things since being 30, and how I celebrated my birthday.

For my 30^th, I had a songs and storytelling soiree where I engaged my guests with some live storytelling and some singing. In the days/weeks/months leading up to my party, while I was still a seasoned 29 year old, I had been obsessing over what could go wrong and doubting my creative ideas and the validity of the stories that I had to tell. But something changed for me on my actual birthday when I turned 30. I had gotten a massage earlier in the day, came home to “prepare” and was so inspired and confident in what I was doing that new insights of how to craft my stories just poured in to my head. It was awesome.

I can’t explain the psychology of what is happening to me…I can admit that nothing chemically/hormonally shifted for me when I turned 30. I’m sure a large part of what I’m experiencing with regards to more confidence, actually already existed in me.  I do however accept the social expectations/construction that this age brings, as it is providing a great gateway to further exploring, loving and trusting myself. I look forward to telling others when they hit this age, “Welcome to the club!”