I had a birthday. I was shown love through many birthday wishes and some choice, VERY thoughtful gifts.

So, now I am officially 35. I’ve been saying it for like 6 months. But, now I can officially say it. I was told today it’s a rite of passage.

I’ve written about how I imagined 35 before. I started a fiction, maybe two years ago, as a means to process day to day things. Perhaps a phrase struck me in a conversation but I really wanted to anonymize the situation… so instead of saying something like “a person close to me” or “he” or “she”, I created little fictions. The fictions weren’t very good, thinking in full context, but they were a lot of fun to write. I could project. I could fantasize about what something would be like. I was able to tell a story … just for the sake of story. The hard part was making it coherent. I wrote in fragments, so I didn’t always remember what I said. I started keeping a simple log of timelines, but I still didn’t get all the details right. Then, there was the redundancy, so reading it all together it was… well… boring.

It was a much safer way to digest the work, the family, the club scenarios I couldn’t make sense of and had to process in order to understand. There was a picture floating around Pinterest the other day that said something like, “I don’t know what I think until I read what I write.”

So, what do I think right now? I think I’m a year older. I still like being in my 30s. It still feels young and adventurous, even though I don’t feel as adventurous these days. It feels full of potential and promise, while at the same time angst and frustration over not having accomplished anythign super significant. If you look at my life through a certain lens, you could argue that’s a bunk, silly, illogical thought. But, I’m thinking about it through the paid lens. I’m at a job without a title that means much. I’m at a payscale that fails to pay off my loans, productively. I’m maxed out with my roles trying to seek fulfillment bouncing between paid work, three volunteer roles, motherhood, and wifedom. It’s full, but it’s not wholly fulfilling because I crave more. So, that’s 35 for me.

Perhaps my 35-year-resolution should be to secure that role. Secure that place where I can get more fulfillment from fewer roles. So, what can go and what can’t go? Mother and wife are here to stay, so that’s a minimum of two roles. I love volunteering, but I splice my volunteering to get fulfillment for the things that matter to me: people (social change), food (food security/sustainability), and environmentalism (stewardship/sustainability). I amass skills that heighten my big picture awareness, but they don’t give me a lot of depth in a specialty. It makes it difficult applying for jobs that focus on a specialty – a specialty that I know a lot about but have difficulty explaining the required depth.

And the computer died, so the end.