I can fully attest to the idea time moves faster the older
we get. It has been nearly three months since I turned 30 and I swear it has
passed in the blink of an eye. The majority of the time I don’t give it a
second thought, unless of course I am being melodramatic about being old or
inputting into a cardio machine. (Sidenote: apparently 30-year olds burn more
calories than 29-year olds, or least the cross trainer tells me. So bonus.)
If anything, I completely ignored the birthday and spent the
first few weeks reverting backwards. Without even realizing it, I found myself
getting sucked back into a pseudo-relationship with Mr. NDNS, engaging Sparks
in the flirtatious text exchanges and being a passive aggressive as ever with
my boss.
I mean, that all is just so 29.
And then an opportunity for change presented itself. My
landlord informed me she would be moving back to this fair city and would want
her house back, meaning I would need to relocate. I had been talking about
leaving for months; maybe this was the time.
I spent a few weeks in a state which can only be described
as panic as I simultaneously searched for jobs thousands of miles away and apartments
within a mile radius of where I was. I figured whichever panned out first was
the way it was meant to be (for now). Turns out it was the apartment and so I
moved 1.2 miles away into a beautiful old building with wood floors that make
my knees weak. Or maybe that’s creaking floorboards. Either way, the floors are
gorgeous.
I decided then to focus my attention on starting over as
much as I could without really going anywhere. With all the moving around I
have done since college, I had never taken the opportunity to truly go through
what I owned and ask myself whether I wanted it. So I took stock of every piece of
furniture, clothing and kitchenware I had, noting what held good memories and
what held bad ones; what was giving off good energy and what was sucking out
bits of my soul.
In the end, I sold almost every piece of furniture I had
ever had sex on (in/under/against/you get the point), writing it off as having
bad mojo. As much I hate to admit it, The Asshole was haunting me every time I
sat on the couch or worked at my desk (sorry to all my friends who sat at
either and now have that mental image).
Moving was an opportunity to downsize. Streamline. Simplify.
Which I did, until I had almost nothing substantial left. Except my shoe
collection. Of the wood furniture I kept, I stripped it, sanded it and refinished it until it was more beautiful than before and looking much more my style.
No, the metaphor of this is not lost on me.
I have since bought new furniture to replace the bad mojo pieces and have been
having a love affair with my chair and a half/ottoman for the last week. We are
one.
It occurred to me somewhere around my second bottle of wine
in the new pad, however, that I was doing the opposite of simplifying. I was nesting. I
was turning this apartment with the stunning wood floors into something that resembled a home.
With the ink barely dry on a one-year lease though, I had stopped looking at job sites out of respect for my sanity and instead started
focusing on trying to appreciate the one I have. In the time since my birthday,
I experienced one of the greatest professional thrills of my career, but at the
time I didn’t appreciate it.
It wasn’t until I was speaking to a class and someone asked
me what makes the hours and headaches of the job worth it and that’s when I
knew. I could pinpoint a precise
split-second of time and I realized how much the aforementioned experience rejuvenated
my desire continue and reminded me how truly lucky I am to go to work with the
people and in the place(s) I do.
My contentment might have been helped along by year-long
financing on a couch and bed I have yet to make memories in, but for the first
time in a long time, it feels real.
Or at least it did …
Stay tuned. I may be 30, but there is a lot of groove left to find.
