I can’t explain why, but I’ve always had a target on 32 as a milestone of sorts. Obviously 30 is the big one, but to me 32 has always been “you’re in your 30s, but not in your mid-30s. But like…you’re there”. It doesn’t feel especially celebratory, but more of a ‘wow, made it to 32’ kind of thing. Hard to explain, but it’s an age I’ve had a weird affinity for. I don’t know if that’s when I think “true adulthood” begins or what, but it’s a number that has always stuck out
I don’t know when or why I decided this, but a long time ago I thought to myself “I want to be 32 when I have my first kid”. I don’t think there’s a universal right age to have a kid, nor did I consciously decide to have a kid this year, but it is what happened!
This birthday also snuck up on me in a weird way. I am usually a ‘birthday person’, but this year the idea of planning something was overwhelming at best. A few things contributed to this:
My mind for the past few months has been on getting ready for the baby to get here, spending my free time around the house or running errands.
My mind for the past few months has also been on finding a job (spoiler, I found one, more on that soon!)
I was traveling on my actual birthday, for the above-mentioned job, with a bunch of people I just met (like, actually. I started last Monday!)
I overall was just feeling neutral about my birthday. Not necessarily excited, definitely not upset or sad about it, but neutral. This is a new one, I love my birthday!
I find people usually use birthdays to 1) reflect on their past year and 2) take a look ahead. For me, the look back/look ahead loop is absolutely massive. I feel like I am leaving behind my life as I know it and am about to enter this vortex of the unknown (what I do know is everything is about to change in a very serious way!)
Looking back - I woke up on the morning of my 31st birthday in our then-new apartment and got ready to go to work at my then-new job. I had a great dinner at Cozy Royale, and my friends got me a Junior’s Cheesecake (Raspberry Swirl, my fave) and brought it to the restaurant.
I entered that birthday year knowing that a few months later, we’d start trying to get pregnant. I viewed last summer as my last summer and had a blast. Tons of beach trips, decent amount of travel. Lots of good fun. I went off birth control in September and was pregnant by November, the day before our 1 year anniversary.
I survived a layoff and found a new job. I went through a lot of emotions and have watched my body change and morph.
Looking ahead - there’s a lot of uncertainty in the year ahead. I will become a parent, which is guaranteed to be one of the wilder rides I’ll go one (but hard to say exactly what it will bring)! It’s an interesting place to be — there are equal parts certainty and uncertainty in the upcoming year, and it makes for a scenario I can predict but also can’t at all predict!
So, Happy 32nd to me. Looking forward to all this trip brings — motherhood, career growth, and adapting my relationships and former ways of living <3