30 Something

30 is not the new 20:  It’s 30…that in itself makes it the shit.

I meant to write this eight or nine days ago; but I spent my thirtieth birthday mostly hungover from celebrating, brunching with my three favorite people on the planet (in which mimosas brought back the hangover), working, and Thanksgiving….

Nonetheless, I’m here to finally say a little over a week into a new decade: I’m more than elated to put my twenties behind me.  Twenty-five and the first half of twenty-six will be the hardest things I will ever go through in life; so in spite of it all, I can only go up from here.

The first half of twenty-nine was all about preparation.  The second half of the year was filled with closure, self-discovery, and enough drama to write a second book.  I made amends with my past life by traveling to Virginia in a failed attempt to visit Timile’s grave; but I made it to the cemetery…something that I said I would never do.  I took Cydney with me and I stopped by my in-laws.  I needed to see where I came from to give proper context to where I was going and that made the trip more than a success.

One thing that I didn’t see happening as a result from this trip was that I quit smoking.  Only those closest to me knew that I have smoked on-and-off since I was twenty-one.  I have mentioned it a time or two on this blog; however, I mostly wrote about it as something that I did during a stressful time and that it may have been a casual thing.  Well, I have been beyond stressed almost every day since my twenty-first birthday.  By twenty-nine, I smoked heavily.  The day after coming back from the Commonwealth State, I sat on my porch writing my post as if I was venting to my best friend who I wasn’t talking to at the time inhaling heavily and flicking ashes for what felt like the last time I actually needed to.  In mid-August, after hanging out with my estranged best friend was the last time I smoked a whole stick of tobacco.  Just to see if I was completely over it, in early September I took two puffs of one and threw out the whole pack…I couldn’t stand it.

There have been quite a few other rather interesting occurrences between May and November 22nd that made twenty-nine arguably the most fun I have had since college.  I have some to a realization that I need conflict or some kind of drama in my life because it fuels my creativity and is my greatest muse.  I’m okay with that.  I love having entertaining stories to tell so the shit keeps coming around.  As opposed to succumbing to it, I have learned to facilitate it and be the eye of the storm that stays calm that everything swirls around.

I am sure that the older I get, I will look back at my twenties as some of the best years of my life.  But then again, I can’t think of anyone who is older that would trade being a little slower for the knowledge they have acquired.

Things are really changing in my life.  For as long as I can remember, November 22, 2015 has been circled in my head because I was turning thirty.  I think as a child that was a nice round number in which one knows they’re an adult who has fully arrived into their own.  I am definitely still a work-in-progress; but I’m enjoying the ride.

We’re all constantly evolving.  The first half of one’s twenties are about mapping out one’s ideals and the second half is rectifying those ideals with the real world, all while making decisions in which our mistakes aren’t so costly.  Fuck my thirties being the new twenty…”Bab’ boy, now I’m all grown up.”