35 and...Happy

You guys...I'm 35.

35 FREAKING YEARS OLD.

Wow.

But you know what the really crazy part is?  I am totally cool with it...excited about it, even.

I'm not resisting, not pining for my younger days (okay, maybe just a little...), not thinking about all the things I haven't done with my life.

For once, I'm in a place that I love.

35 is awesome.  Even Claire thinks so.

When I turned 16, I remember thinking "Oh wow, I'm halfway to 32!" (because you know, that's sooooo old) and then when I turned 28 I thought, "Oh geez, I'm 12 years away from both 18 and 40."  And now?  I think, "Holy shit, I'm halfway to 70!"

Turning 30 was a big deal.  It was kind of sad.  It made me think about all the things I hadn't done with my life, all the time I wasted, all the things I *should* have been doing but wasn't.

Around my 30th birthday, Charles and I found ourselves watching a series of documentaries called "The Up Series."  They chronicle the lives of several British children at seven years old, and then fourteen, and then twenty-one...every seven years into their fifties.

It was terribly, terribly sad.

The children were hopeful and optimistic, brimming with a love of life and the never ending possibilities of all of the things they would become.  As they aged, you could see them shift away from the things they loved, draw into themselves, and fall short of their dreams as they settled for less than extraordinary lives.  Some seemed content. Some were angry; others wistful.

The message was heavy: most people don't live their dreams or fulfill their potential.

{I should say here that it's an amazing documentary, and not all depressing...that's just what I took from it at the time I watched it.  AND, the latest one is coming out soon - they're all 56 years old now!}

When I was turning 30, I saw those possibilities in myself.  I imagined I might never do the things I wanted to do, might never reach my full potential, might someday leave this world without making a difference.  And that is *so* not what I want with my life.

What I'm learning is that life is a journey.  It evolves in mysterious ways and can never really be predicted.  But like any journey, I can chart my own path.

Maybe it's taken me a little bit longer than I expected to find exactly what it is I want to do my with my life.  I want my life to be full of my children, my family, friends, horses, books, and writing.  There are so many adventures to be had, so many stories to be told...so much life to live.

One of the things I've been teaching myself is to live life in the moment.  It's hard, sometimes.  There are so many things to worry about, to obsess over, to do.  But when I am able to live in the moment, those stresses melt away.

And strangely, the better able I am to live in the moment, the easier and clearer my journey becomes.

As I practice living this.very.moment.right.this.second, the world I live in starts to flow around me.  And I am fighting it less and less.  I'm along for the ride.  Trying to balance what I can control and what I cannot and make that work for me.

I feel like 35 is going to be amazing.

The tone of this post is a little different than it was for the posts of my last two birthdays! On my 33rd birthday, I whined a lot.  On my 34th birthday, I admitted I've reached "cougar" age.