Turning 30 has been different than I expected. It’s the kind of birthday that I assumed would be A Big Deal in the way that turning 21 is A Big Deal. A life milestone where, for the first time, you might actually have the means to have exactly the type of party you want to have on your own terms. Instead, 30 has been quiet, peaceful, and there have been far fewer sequins involved than I once imagined. Someone messaged me on Instagram this week and shared that their mom once said that your 30s are for contentment, and that resonated with me. I feel all at once completely content about where I am in life, and incredibly excited for what’s to come. Like the possibilities are endless, but if I stayed right here, in this place, that’d be ok, too. That’s what this week’s free essay was about.
But I also know that even if, in 10 years, I’m still in this exact house, at this exact desk, typing this exact newsletter, I’ll probably still be somewhere totally different than I am right now, anyway. I’ll probably feel about 30-year-old Olivia the way I feel about 20-year-old Olivia right now, which is: Bless her heart, but she didn’t have a clue. I have a lot to learn. A lot to figure out. A lot. Having said that, 30 feels different than 20 or 21 for one impossible-to-ignore reason: For the first time, I am entering a decade more concerned with growth than shrinking myself. And that? Well. That changes everything.
I look at the ways I have changed in the last 4 or 5 years of my 20s, and I hardly recognize myself before. So even though I have an endless list of things left to figure out in this life, I thought I’d dedicate this week’s mini podcast to talking about the things I’ve learned, too. Below, you can listen to me discuss 15 things I’ve learned in my 20s and 15 things I’m still trying to figure out, from how I feel about diet and exercise to my opinion on cosmetic procedures to my relationship with extreme sports. Some of it’s serious, some of it’s silly, and I’m nearly 100 percent sure that if I did this same episode in another 10 years, I’d have a complete different list of things I had learned and relearned and unlearned was still learning. But that’s the beauty of life. The gift of aging. And that’s the thing I’m mostly left with on this birthday — that it was never promised to me, to any of us, but I’m here, anyway. What a gift.