Turning 30: The Start of a New Year, a New Decade and a New Chapter

Happy Birthday to me! The day is finally here. I can officially say goodbye to my 20s and welcome my 30s with open arms!

Like I do every year, I am ready to outline my goals, my resolutions if you will, for this next year. However, since this isn’t just any birthday, it’s, as I’ve been annoyingly saying, the start of a new chapter for me and there is a lot I hope to change and do moving forward not just this year, but in general.

I already wrote about looking back at my 20s (click here for that), but before I dive into my goals and resolutions for this year and beyond, I wanted to take a pause to look back at 2020 and my 29th year on earth.

2019 was a hell of a year for me and I approached 2020 and turning 29 with lots of optimism and hope and then COVID happened and threw one giant wrench into everyone’s’ life plans. But, if I take the time to really reflect on this past year, it was probably one of my best, oddly enough.

The last few months of 2020 were absolute hell for me and I unfortunately started to give in to my anxiety and I got a little depressed. I started to lose focus of all the good I had accomplished this year. And becuase the past few months were so rough it’s sometimes hard for me to acknowledge that 2020 was in a lot of ways a really good year for me.

I have other blog posts that talk a lot about this (check out My Corona Journal), so I won’t spend too much time on this, but this past year I really had the opportunity to focus on myself. I discovered new hobbies and passions, I probably would have never even thought of exploring had I not been forced to spend this time at home. I also made a lot of big strides when it came to improving my mental health, even if the past three months really put them to the test, and I can honestly say I felt happy for a lot of this year.

Taking a look back at my Turning 29 – Goals, I actually accomplished or made efforts to accomplish a lot of them, given the state of the world.

1. Read one book per month – I didn’t manage to read one book per month, but I did start reading again which was huge for me. I read most of Iliza Shlesinger’s Girl Logic (I plan to go back and finish that one, I just got distracted by a few other books), and blazed through Hilarie Burton Morgan’s The Rural Diaries (AMAZING). Currently I am reading both Emily Nagoski, Ph.D’s Come As You Are and Jana Kramer and Michael Caussin’s The Good Fight. And I have Josh Tickell’s Kiss the Ground waiting to be read and four other books currently in my Amazon cart. Looking back now, I realized it too me a awhile to really get back into reading for two reasons. One because I hadn’t allowed it to be a priority for so long and two because my taste in literature is vastly different then what it was five years ago.
2. Write a blog post once a week (at a minimum) – This was an on and off achievement. I wasn’t consistent with once a week, but I was much better than I was in the past.
3. Start my podcast and make one shirt – X
4. Start journaling again – X
5. Start eating right and working out again so I can get back to, not a number, but a shape and a size I’m comfortable with – Towards the end of the year I fell off the workout wagon, but there is no denying fitness was a huge part of my year. I have never worked out as consistently or as hard as I did this year. I also made some big dietary shifts.
6. Start hiking and hula hooping more – Well, most national parks and other recreational areas closed down, but I did do another hula hoop challenge.
7. Spend more intentional time with family and friends – One word, COVID. I couldn’t really attempt this goal, but because seeing loved ones was so hard, it did make the time I did spend with them that much more special.
8. Have fun, be happy, and not let my life be controlled by my anxiety and self-doubt – I guess this one doesn’t have a solid yes or no when it comes to accomplishment. In some ways I got better in other ways I got worse. In general I’m moving in the right direction, but I’ve still got a long ways to go.

So what are my goals for this next year? This next decade? The next 30 years?

Honestly, not much has changed from last year to this year, as far as goals go. During my 30th trip around the sun I want to –

• Read more, hopefully one book a month.
• Write more consistently, hopefully once a week.
• Get back into working out, eating right and loving my body.
• Continue to educate myself on gardening and eat more food that I grow myself.
• Build or refurbish something by myself.
• Start a new project, anything, my book, my podcast, shirts, soaps, something.
• Meditate on a regular schedule.
• Start every morning with a positive/supportive thought about myself and end every night by listing at least three the things I am thankful for.
• No more phone in bed

Now what do I want from life? What are my goals, my resolutions…my intentions? Well, number one, I want –

• to live an intentional life.
• to slow down and be ok taking a pause.
• to focus on the good, live life with gratitude and positive energy, less pessimism and negativity.
• to create memories and spend intentional time with family, friends and all my loved ones.
• to start speaking my mind.
• to figure out who I am and be ok with the process and the results. I want to love whoever that person is at whatever stage I happen to be at.
• to not be afraid to dream and chase those dreams.
• to create something larger than myself.

*Cover Image by Cucu Petronela from Pixabay