Aging, Or Turning 33 and Not Wanting a Car or a Ph.D.

I'm 33 now, as of last Saturday.

Years past, starting in the elementary school days, I used to write up a storm on each October 2, my birthday, and it continued for years. In whatever locked, unlocked, tattered, new, paged or electronic medium I wrote in, I'd determine what I would accomplish in this next year of my life. It ranged from "getting a cat" to "getting a car" and "finding a boyfriend" to "finding a house". These desires all got written down, and they are somewhere still, archived for my own later-in-life indulgence when I'll consider it amusing and sweet to look back at how I resolved to stop nervously throwing up before swim meets or how much I wanted to publish a novel by the time I was 30.

This year I didn't write anything for the first time in years. Being someone who overthinks absolutely everything, I feel two ways about this. Am I finally settled and there's no need to write about what comes next? Or am I too complacent and I'm not taking the time? Either way makes me anxious, and unresolvable as this situation is based on a lack of anything with which to determine everything I hope, I'd better get resolving something in order to remedy this.

The pressure of everything I used to feel seems lesser. I remember being about to graduate from Berkeley and preparing applications to Brown for a Ph.D. in brain science, and also to Columbia for a MFA in creative writing. Clearly I didn't know what I wanted then, but I was really drawn to how people think and also how they create, I wanted to know the "why" and "how" behind everything that drove meaningful human existence. I ended up being a journalist and a writer. In the years since then these occupations have fit me well, I suppose, I'm curious and I like to write, so I get to ask others about how they think and how they create. A mini-academy of the same, perhaps.

I do think that the older I become, the less I care about focusing on myself. I think about spending time contributing to greater goods like family and communities and a marriage, things that involve others in collaboration. So these recent birthdays haven't been spent considering what I want and how to get them. I have what I want - a loving and supportive husband, a lovely home, meaningful work, dear friends and family who infuse my life with gratefulness - so that these yearly landmarks seem less like a pressure to measure accomplishment and become something and more like a time to reflect and realize all the good things that I do have.

Someone, I wish I could remember who because I reference this all the time, told me once that being successful in life is not about how much money you make or how much fame you garner, instead its about how many options you have at any given time. The more you have, the better off you are, and I think that any 30-something birthday is a great time to tally up these rich, rich options.