There was a time when 30 sounded old to me.
Not old old, obviously. But old enough to have it together.
I thought by 30, you were supposed to know who you were, what you were doing, where you were going, and probably have a pretty solid idea of how you were going to get there. Thirty felt like one of those ages where you crossed an invisible line and suddenly became an adult who had answers.
Now that I’m getting closer to it, I realize how ridiculous that is.
Because the closer I get to 30, the more I realize that none of us really reach some magical age where life suddenly makes sense.
You just get older.
You learn more. You experience more. You make decisions, make mistakes, change your mind, figure some things out and realize there are still plenty of things you haven’t.
And when you look around at the people you grew up with, went to school with, worked with, or simply crossed paths with over the years, you start to see just how differently life can turn out for people who are around the same age.
Some people are married with kids. Some are single and traveling. Some are building businesses. Some are focused on their careers. Some are starting over after a divorce, a breakup, or a major change in their lives. Some are exactly where they were a few years ago. Some are doing really well financially, while others are trying to figure out how to make the numbers work.
Some people seem completely comfortable with where they are. Others are questioning everything.
Some are happy. Some are struggling. Some are doing both.
And none of that is particularly unusual.
I think that’s one of the things you understand better with age. There isn’t one version of adulthood that everybody eventually arrives at. There are just people living different lives at different speeds.
When I was younger, I definitely had a picture in my head of what being 30 would look like. I probably wouldn’t have been able to give you every detail, but I had this general idea that by then, you would know what you were doing.
You’d be established.
Settled.
Confident.
Sure.
Now I’m here, and I know enough to know that those things aren’t nearly as permanent as they sound.
I have a husband, four kids, a home, businesses I’ve built, and plenty of things in my life that I’m grateful for and proud of. There are things that younger me would probably be shocked to know I’ve accomplished already.
But having those things doesn’t mean I’ve stopped wondering what’s next.
There are still moments when I think about where I want my career to go, what I want to build, what I want my life to look like in another five or ten years, and whether the things I want now will even be the things I want then.
I’ve realized that you can be proud of the life you’ve built and still want to build something different.
You can be grateful and still have goals.
You can love your life and still feel like there are parts of yourself you haven’t met yet.
Those things don’t contradict each other.
And I think that’s where the whole idea of being “behind” starts to fall apart.
Because behind who?
Behind the person you went to high school with who got married at 22? Behind the friend who bought a house before you? Behind the person who started their business ten years ago? Behind the person who seems to have everything figured out on social media?
There is always going to be somebody ahead of you in something.
There will also always be somebody looking at your life and thinking you’re ahead of them.
That’s just how it works.
And when you’re younger, it’s easy to think the people older than you have some secret information that you don’t have yet. You look at someone who’s 30 when you’re 18 and think, They must really know what they’re doing.
Then you turn 30.
And you realize… we’re all just people.
The same thing happens again when you meet people in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s. You realize that getting older doesn’t mean you stop changing. People still change careers, fall in love, get divorced, start businesses, move, go back to school, discover new interests, make mistakes, repair relationships, change their minds, and decide they want something completely different from what they thought they wanted ten years earlier.
Life doesn’t stop giving you new chapters just because you’ve reached a certain age.
That’s also why the phrase “it’s never too late” hits a little differently now.
When you’re 16 or 20, somebody telling you that it’s never too late can almost sound annoying. You might be thinking, Okay, but eventually it has to be too late for something.
And sure, there are realities that come with time. We don’t get unlimited years, and life doesn’t give everybody the same circumstances.
But there is still so much room for change.
You can decide you don’t like the career you’ve spent ten years building and do something else.
You can realize the relationship you’re in isn’t healthy and leave.
You can finally take the trip you’ve been putting off.
You can go back to school.
You can start the business.
You can pick up the hobby you abandoned when life got busy.
You can become more confident, more disciplined, more patient, more intentional.
You can simply wake up one day and realize that the person you were five years ago isn’t the person you want to be anymore.
And you don’t need to apologize for that.
I’m a believer, so I don’t believe I’m walking through any of this by accident. At the same time, having faith doesn’t mean I know exactly what every part of my life is going to look like.
There are still things I’m praying about. There are things I don’t understand yet. There are things I’m working toward that haven’t happened. There are things I may want today that could look completely different a few years from now.
That’s life.
And maybe that’s what I’m learning as 30 gets closer.
I don’t want to spend the next decade trying to prove that I’ve made it.
I don’t think there is a point where you can finally sit down and say, Okay, I’m done. I’ve figured myself out.
I want to keep growing. I want to keep trying things. I want to be open to changing my mind. I want to build on what I’ve already created without being afraid to start something new.
I want to be able to look at someone else’s life without using it as a measuring stick for my own.
Because we’re all somewhere different.
Somebody is getting married.
Somebody is getting divorced.
Somebody is having their first baby.
Somebody is sending their last child off to college.
Somebody is buying their first house.
Somebody is selling theirs and starting over.
Somebody is finally making money.
Somebody is trying to figure out how they’re going to pay their bills.
Somebody is living the life they always wanted.
Somebody is quietly trying to figure out what they want in the first place.
And somebody is probably looking at all of those people wondering if they’re doing enough.
I know I’ve been that person.
So maybe 30 doesn’t need to feel like the finish line I imagined when I was younger.
Maybe it can just be another chapter.
A little more experience than I had before. A little more perspective. A better understanding of myself. A little less pressure to have every answer.
I’m still figuring it out.
And from what I’ve learned so far, I’m pretty sure I’m going to be figuring it out for a long time.
