I celebrated 30 by chopping off a sizable portion of my hair and running off to India for a week.

My twenties were amazing.  I would not give up anything from those super fun years, though sometimes absolutely brutal in their reciprocity.  It felt like for every extreme positive one could experience, there was also some other polar opposite feeling coming up.  As a result, I find that I can only watch about 60% of the episodes of Lena Dunham’s Girls before painful memories rise up to the surface again. I consider that praise for Ms. Dunham.

And the cool thing is that all the ladies I look up to now are in their mid-thirties. Or they’re older. Mindy Kaling, Tina Fey, Jenna Lyons, all dem ladies.  They are leaders in their fields. They are admired for their pluck. Mindy and Jenna dress the f out of life. Tina laughs the f out of life.

I loved my twenties. I hated my twenties. But without my twenties, I wouldn’t have built a successful business of consulting. I wouldn’t have learned the ins and the outs of the biz. I’m happy to report that for the first time since I was 18, I have lived in the same home for nearly 3 years. Like whoa. I have been able to weather rent increases.

Likewise, I also wouldn’t have learned that I could do more than one thing without my twenties. That without the slightly underemployed traumatic years after grad school, I wouldn’t have learned plasticity. Surprisingly I also learned that underemployment is a way more traumatic experience than relocation.

And without seven years of attempting to plan the perfect holiday getaway, I wouldn’t have mastered the art of Tripadvisor, the exhaustive blog search, and the collection of various points on a single wonderful credit card. This little runaway to India has been the best thing since string cheese.

So as I sit here on the last evening of my twenties writing this, nursing a very strong coconut something made with local brew, I am so excited. Bursting. And that’s not due to the tandoori snapper I consumed without limit this afternoon. The dirty thirties are gonna blow the tumultuous twenties out of the water.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Gary Gay