Posts Tagged ‘aging’

24
Jan
2018

a social life

categories: california, me

I’ve been thinking about friendship a lot lately. Partially because I finally joined the 21st century, Instagram, and am therefore bombarded with images of happy cliques; and, partially because I’ve just moved 3,000 miles away from the place I have called home for the past 15 years. It’s gotten me to this too real place of acceptance and clarity.

In your 20’s everyone is your friend: people from high school, pals from college, work colleagues, friends of friends. You take em all. It’s like a decade of fishing where you don’t throw any back.

Then, in your 30’s you start pruning. Weeding out the emotional vampires and the “all drama all the time” crew. Some of it happens naturally–an illness in the family forces some friends to step up and others to show their true colors. Marriage, kids–some fall away naturally. You switch jobs/careers/partners and you find yourself with fewer and fewer friends. Which is actually pretty great–you spend more time with the people you genuinely love and who genuinely love you.

So, you’re chugging along, happily, with your perfect little crew of good friends. Then, all of a sudden, you make this giant life-change. And, it’s the right thing and everyone supports you but distance. Distance, man. It’s real. Time differences and work schedules, bedtimes and familial obligations and just life. Life in a new place happens. You have to restart your career and re-acclimate your kid. You have to find (or maintain) that inner circle all over again. But, how?

There are a trillion articles about making friends in your thirties. My problem isn’t making friends it’s maintaining friendships. How does one find the time as an adult? How do you prioritize friends over family or over self-care or over laziness and fatigue? How do you balance it all? This isn’t one of those, “how can we have it all” questions. This is just a very real query: how does one find the time and energy to be social in your late thirties–with a partner and a kid and a house and a career?

Where are all those extra hours the enviable #girlsquads on instagram seem to have?

 

27
Jan
2016

what does it mean to be 35? let me elucidate:

categories: me
  • Finding hairs on your nipples.
  • Finding hairs on your chin.
  • Finding hairs on your cheeks.
  • Just in general, lots of hair-finding–it’s like puberty all over again.
  • Re-figuring out your skin–I tamed you years ago, monster zits! Damn hormonal changes.
  • Rolls in new places. What’s that strange feeling on my back? Oh, it’s part of my body, hello new friend.
  • Realizing you don’t move the way you used to–“No, I’m not limping!” Wait, am I limping?
  • The way food begins to just stay put. Like, right smack in that mid-section, so you start to get that muffin-top roll over your mom-jeans. Feeling a little sheepish about all my judgy eye rolls at the calorie-counting women in the teachers lounge. I think my Dorito-binging days are over.
  • Having dear friends who you cherish and who love and support you through your trickiest times.
  • Not having any friends who you actually, secretly (or, not-so-secretly) dislike.
  • Being in a stable and mutually respectful relationship.
  • Making life-changing decisions that are scary and intense but knowing that, ultimately, they are the right decisions–and, therefore, not being fearful of change.
  • Eating well but allowing yourself to indulge every now and again.
  • Living frugally but allowing yourself to splurge every now and again–can you say, Book of Mormon! (Sidenote, how are those tickets still so expensive?!)
  • Being productive most days but allowing yourself some lazy, couch-potato, netflix-binging days too.
  • Reading good books and not-so-great ones without judgment.
  • Saying goodbye to the bands you thought were cool because it was so much work to listen to them. It’s all easy-listening these days. Give me a band I can hum to while I cook and I’m happy.
  • Being able to set boundaries. I love you and I will be there for you but I also have to take care of myself. Turns out you are no good to anyone if you aren’t being good to yourself.
  • Being able to say “no” guilt-free. “I can, but I don’t want to” is a perfectly fine excuse.
  • Acknowledging that you are not always right. Damn, it hurts even writing it.
  • Acknowledging that you still have so much to learn.
  • Knowing that even if you are not the smartest, the most beautiful, the most charming, the wittiest person in the room you still have a lot to offer.
  • Not being intimidated because someone has more information about a topic than you. Even when they’re super douche-y. Now, shall we talk about education? I’d love to reference fifteen acronyms that are totally meaningless to you and look at you like you should absolutely know what they mean. No? Dummy.
  • Starting with kindness but being capable of switching to intense bitchiness if the situation warrants it.
  • Being a legit adult. Teenagers look like babies to me. Seriously, how are they driving?! It’s difficult to admit, but I think I am a true-blue grownup.