One Year Into My 40th Decade

My 4th bday - I've been partying hard since birth, baby

 The 30's are an interesting set of years; it's the decade we all seem to dread getting to, yet once we're here it's almost a relief to see the previous 3 decades finally start to pay off. (Or at least that's what seems to be happening now, finally.)

This isn't to say my life is exactly where I want it to be, but when I hit the big 3-0 without hitting most of my official "success markers" and making myself miserable while stewing on this fact, I finally ran out of f***s to give. I'm still out. It just got exhausting.

And, of course, when I stopped caring is when stuff started to fall into place. It's still early to feel 100% confident that things are going to work out as I hoped (life has made me cynical), but I'm guarded-hopeful and feeling good.

This weekend marked not only the end of some schedule MADNESS that will make my day job a lot easier, but also a nice upswing from last year's birthday. I'm still shaking off my disappointment in myself and some certain people in how my birthday was treated last year; it really hurt me, deeply, but part of that was my own doing. This year, though, I was so busy I didn't even CARE, and The Hubs actually forced me into picking something to do for my bday. When I finally figured that out, I got excited about the weekend, and that led to an overall fantastic weekend. Happiness in celebrating myself, relief at getting my schedule back to my own choices, and joy in finding out that I am more loved than I believed I was last year (and that I need to get the f*** over myself sometimes).

So far, my 30's have actually been fairly excellent, even when I was unemployed. It's definitely nice to be employed again, that's for dang sure. I'm just saying I'm happy so far with how this decade is going, and that's a nice place to be.

That isn't to say there aren't still things I want to work on; I want to create a beautiful life, and find the balance between work and living life. I still live a little too much for work (and considering I'm a teacher, that kind of comes with the job), but I'm hoping that as I work more and become more confident and secure in my job, and find routines that work for me, that it'll start to balance out. I want to cook fresh, delicious food and break the addiction to processed sugars and junk food. I want to take the time to craft with my hands and read books analog-style, and to break my computer/internet addiction. In a lot of ways, my life is getting close to where I want it to be, but there's still some areas that I can control (see previous) and other areas where I can't change but can work on my side of it (see medical issues).

Despite the self-assessed "need for improvement" areas, though, I still feel fairly happy with where I currently am and the direction The Hubs and I are pursuing together. Life is good, and it's nice to feel that way on my actual birthday.