there's something scary about your 30s vs your 20s
When I was reaching my late-20s, the general sentiment I got from others was that your 30s are a great time because you have more financial freedom and independence. I'm turning 32 this year, and something I think isn't talked about enough is that it's a lot harder to find big milestones to hit, which means you need to find purpose in other things.
When I graduated college, I was looking forward to the following things:
- Moving out of my mom's apartment
- Paying off my student loans
- Job-hopping until I achieved a paycheck I was happy with
These are all goals that were more-or-less within reach and could be accomplished in 6 years or less, so they didn't feel completely daunting. They gave me purpose and motivation to not be complacent in my life.
In my 30s, these milestones don't exist as much. The way I see it, there are 2 major events, given that I don't want children:
- Buy a house
- Get married
The issue with buying a house is that it's not really realistic for people in my generation and younger because the amount of cash you need is completely absurd, so putting a date on this milestone feels impossible and pointless. I'm sure I'll buy something eventually, but I can't really predict when it's going to happen. Same goes for marriage.
So this brings me to my point: finding purpose in my 30s is way more difficult than it was in my 20s. I'm realizing that I need to completely recalibrate my version of success and find purpose in just living a happy life. It's freaking scary!!!
In my 30s, I'm picking up new hobbies and delving deeper into hobbies I already had. I wrote about learning the piano, and i've been weight training for about 7 years consistently and experimenting with that. And these are going great! But the issue is these activities don't really lead to a final goal and most likely are going to be lifetime hobbies. I've also played around with learning Spanish, but it didn't really stick.
I realize I'm not the first person to have this thought:
"Is this really all there is to life..."
is probably a thought that's crossed most adults' minds at some point. But even so it's a really weird period of transition!!!
I also realize how privileged this whole blog post sounds. Paying off my student loans is something a lot of my friends are still doing into their 30s, so I should feel blessed that I was able to pay them off before the age of 32, but I don't think it should invalidate how I feel.
Idk. I feel like I need something to keep me going mentally. I have a really peaceful life right now, and I shouldn't complain, but I also feel like if I'm not moving towards something, my brain is going to turn to mush.
Maybe I'll figure it out at 33.