Dear Diary, I’m 30.

It’s been awhile, but I don’t want to waste time apologizing for my absence. It’s been weird, but freeing to not blog regularly this year.

I’m 30 and I’m blogging.

I’ve gotten to the point where I wish I could just start blogging over again where NO ONE was reading. When I knew no one was reading, I just made up phantom readers in my head that could possibly stumble upon my post and wrote to them.

Or I wrote it kind of like a dear diary thing where I knew there was a possibility that the diary would respond, but not very likely.

[ photo source. pin it here. ]

When you don’t have readers, or people you know reading, you can write whatever the eff you want. Less pressure. More realness.

And definitely more self indulgence. (although let’s be honest, it’s pretty dang self indulgent around here as is)

But I know people are reading, so I write eff instead of another word I think I should be able to write as a 30 year old adult.

Oh yeah, I’m officially 30 now. April 7th was the day I turned a corner where there’s no coming back—I am grown up.

I’m 30.

I don’t know about you, but when I get to milestones in my age like this, I tend to flip out. Not necessarily on the outside, but on the inside I’m curled up in a ball, rocking myself every time a fellow student asks, “wait, how old are you?”

I’m not where I thought I would be at 30. And on some days it sucks.

( Okay sprinkle toast makes it more bearable. )

I was gonna be a young, cool, mom. I was gonna be an architect. An interior designer. A dietitian. An author. A professional blogger.

But instead I’m a student, working at a job where I literally get paid minimum wage because –work study– and some days I feel like I’ve failed a little bit.

Some days it makes it really hard not to want to give up when someone 10 years younger than me is a peer at my job or when a friend asks how much longer I have in school.

Two years dude. Yeah.

Turning 30 makes you reflect (even more) on how the hell you ended up where you are.

Oh well. Can’t turn back time, right?

And I suppose I don’t really want to regret all of the decisions I’ve made because I’ve learned and grown a lot along the way. Moving to Minnesota for two years might be the only time I live outside of Nebraska, for example, but it’s one of those things that I question myself about regularly.

[ pin photo here. ]

That questioning needs to stop for my sanity I think.

And of course I know I’m not supposed to compare myself to others, but it’s a very human thing to do.

So anyways, back to blogging. On this blog.

I think what I need to do here is to just write about whatever I want for maybe a year. That way I could see what resonates with people or what I like writing about and I won’t put so much pressure on myself.

[ pin photo here. ]

The pressure usually results in breakdowns and ultimately not writing on the blog at all. Or writing a series of sad sad posts. But maybe I should even be okay with the sad ones because that’s life, right?

It is a good thing I’m 30 though, because that post I wrote about being a 30 year old going back to school is now technically accurate (I was 29 when I wrote it HA).

I’m not sure if this post means I will be writing regularly again. I do know that writing tends to help me process thoughts and connect with people, so I want to continue doing so.

I do, however, have this big life thing called a wedding coming up in 6 months and I might be preoccupied with that and with keeping the wedding blog updated.

Hey, at least I am doing something adult-like in my life, right?

So happy birthday to me. Let’s plan a wedding.