You Should Not Live Your 30s the Same Way as Your 20s
Some wise words, maybe from the realms of Tumblr, once said something along the lines of your 20s being a time to figure things out. Which is 100% true. It's the first time you're an adult, likely away from the place you called home and the comfort of your family, and it's scary as hell. Even those who get college educations are often lost because while you can get A's history and communications, those student loans racked up didn't for lessons in reality. We often times spend our 20s figuring out the hard stuff; love, careers, friends outside of a classroom, living situations, life in general. Those 10 years are for exploration but once you hit the big 3-0, it's time to change it up because each decade of your life should be a chapter worth reading, and no one wants to read a book that's the same crap for 400 pages. Even Harry Potter knew when to switch things up to keep their interesting.
That's not to say that on the eve of your 30th birthday you have to have your life pieced together perfectly. Hell, we're human, which means we're far from perfection. Unless, of course, your name is Beyoncé Knowles. Then life is grand and magical. For the rest of us, when the clock strikes and we turn 30, it's definitely okay to not have your life just right just yet. But note that you should be taking bigger steps than you did in your 20s to get there.
If the job you have isn't progressing into a legit career you can be proud of, leave. If we've learned anything from shows like Chopped, other than how to make a vinaigrette, is that it's never too late to start anew. Don't like your office job? Then make the moves and get into something else. Then there's our girl Leslie Jones who is on the opposite side of the spectrum. She showed that if you work your ass off at the one thing you KNOW you want to do, it'll happen sooner or later. Girl became the oldest cast member on Saturday Night Live in her late 40s. Hashtag determination.
Other than work, there's play. Partying every night should be taken advantage of when you're young. You don't want to be those old women at the club who look like they're trying to find someone to share their late husband's money with. Don't drop all the fun, but realize that the club scene comes with some drama you won't want to deal with in your 30s. Say you're still single come 33. Do you really think you're going to meet a great guy dry humping to Pitbull at 1 a.m.? You're going to get a great hook up, but it's possible the dude hitting on every other girl at the bar isn't the one who'd make a great dad later down the road. You spent a good 10 or so years going out and doing that and if you met the one then and there, great for you. If not, open your horizons to meet someone you can have a real adult relationship because in this new chapter, you don't want that youth filled drama.
Look at the women of Jersey Shore. Yeah, NO ONE would have guessed that today the women we watched as Snooki and JWoww would now be the coolest mommies and wives just a few years later. They had their fun then and now they've grown into the next chapter of their life, each with fascinating parts to take in. Which is what life is all about. You can't sit there and say domestication isn't as interesting as the club scene because there are a crap ton of mommy bloggers out there who would beg to differ.
So while you may think that you want to be Peter Pan and never move past this partying phase, we can easily bet that no one would want to watch middle-aged Peter trying to make sense of his life after the Lost Boys realized they needed to get the hell out start their own lives elsewhere.
Life's about growing and with each chapter of your life, if there's no reasonable growth - no one is going to read and what kind of life is that? Don't be basic and get stuck writing the same story over and over again.
