28 Years Old

So, I’m going to be straight up honest here.  I’m a woman who is very comfortable with the concept of my 30s.  In fact, I’m excited to start a chapter that many friends who are older than me say is going to be fantastic.  That said, today is my 28th birthday.  Today I start my 29th year on this little blue planet in the universe.

While this fact makes me feel like this…

It also makes me feel like this…

Can someone tell me where the time went? It’s not so much that I’m afraid of getting older; it’s more that it seems like I can just blink, and the time between Adult Liz and Kid/Teen Liz becomes infinitely larger.  For example, ten years ago (double digits, vom) I was starting my senior year of high school.  The people who are graduating from Langley High School this academic year will be the Class of 2011.

WHAT?!

Anyway.

This morning, at 12am, I was ringing in my birthday in style.  I was on our couch, eating an uncut cake directly out of a pan with a fork, drinking Game Day Ice beer (classy), and shitting my pants while watching the original Paranormal Activity for the hundredth time.

As I watched Katie and Micah deal with the fact that, hey, there’s a fucking demon in their house, with crumbs of chocolate cake clinging desperately to the corners of my mouth, I started thinking about goals I wanted to accomplish this year.

To be honest, life was good to me as a 27 year old.  I got married to an amazing guy.  I’ve really started making a home here in DC.  I’ve met some pretty incredible (okay, completely awesome) people.  Oh yea, and as an early birthday present I was offered a job at LivingSocial a couple of weeks ago.  Spoiler Alert: I accepted the offer and will be starting a week from tomorrow.

Life, in short, has been an exhilarating rollercoaster — especially over the past few months.

As hokey as it sounds, though, I feel like a lot of the great things that have been happening have been purely external, and I’d really like to spend this year focusing on me a little bit and bettering myself.  And seriously, as an only child, I am an expert at funneling all of my attention and energy in my direction.

I am the happiest I have ever been, but I have been slipping up in a few areas.  For example, I had pretty much quit smoking entirely.  I wasn’t having any cravings.  I had lost that urge entirely to smoke at work.  I was successfully removing it from my life.  Over the past few months, however, I have been slipping up.  Thankfully I am nowhere even close to my old pack a day habit, but I have fallen off the bandwagon.

Another thing is that I can be a petty, grudge-holding, gossipy whore if I set my mind to it.  Oh, who am I fooling?  I can slip into that mentality quicker than I can slip into a food coma at Denny’s.  Sometimes it’s okay — let’s face it, a girl needs to unleash the cattiness every now and again.  There are times, though, where I’ll let that part of me out, and I won’t think too much of it.  But then an hour will pass, or maybe even a whole day, before I will catch myself in the mirror and really not like the person I see.  It’s an internal ugliness that can be very sobering.  I don’t want to be that trash-talking person who spreads needless gossip, when it serves no purpose except to stir the pot.  I don’t want to be the person who doesn’t know how to let things go.

I’m not trying to be intentionally hard on myself, nor am I saying that I’m a bad person.  But I think that if we all took a long hard look in the mirror, we’d all find a few things we’d like to improve.  I’ve spent the past year building a great life for myself; I mean, it’s not even noon yet, and I have been absolutely blown away by the outpouring of birthday wishes, gifts, and animated birthday .gifs.  I want to be the better person, the better wife, and the better friend who deserves all that, so that’s my goal for this year.  It’s time to dropkick the chain-smoking, insecure, Negative Nancy to the curb.

With that said, I am going to push forward with this new “Holy hell, I’m 28 years old!” momentum.  I am going to seize the day, and work hard to improve myself.  And I’m going to start right now with my first order of business: straightening my hair in my cubicle.

Tagged as: birthdays, happy birthday to me, self improvement