Thirty Life Crisis

It’s official … I’m having a Thirty Life Crisis. Although I’m still three months away from the Big 3-0, I’m beginning to recognize that I am entering a different, more adult stage of my life and need to start acting like and appreciating it.

It’s not that I drink and party like a 22-year-old or engage in irresponsible behavior, I just have been living like I’m stuck in my mid-twenties for a while and it’s time to graduate and move on. This phase involves scrimping and saving every penny, often forgoing guilty pleasures and splurges, a.k.a. treating myself right. Maybe it was the way I was raised—by fiscally-responsible and frugal parents— or perhaps I am still living like the poor grad student I was when I first moved here making nothing, and then a mere $10 an hour for more than a year.

However, even after I got my job last March, I continued to save and not treat myself to that pair of shoes or that shirt-- the only fun I allowed myself was spent on plane tickets home and the occasional night out on the weekends (when drinks are like nine bucks a pop, that’s a big night out for the bank account!). I guess it didn't help that I now had two degrees for which I had to repay the government, and that monthly number scared me a little.

But two weeks ago, I tore through my tiny closet and overflowing drawers and got rid of half of my clothes. Some of these things I had been wearing for more than five years. I also decided that anything I moved to Chicago with—when I was a tender 26-year-old—and was still wearing now needed to go. My fashionable roommates sat with me, rolling their eyes in disbelief at some of the stuff I had been holding on to. Some of my favorite comments included “that is way too young for you”, “that looks like something a mom would wear” (and not a cool mom), and “is that a shirt from Aero from 2006?!” (my roommate who is a manager at Aeropostale called me out and threw it out faster than I could explain why I had kept it and wore it as recently as September).

Since then, I’ve spent some money on more grown-up, yet fashionable clothes that a 30-year-old would wear. OK, so I got them for 60 percent off the sale price at LOFT, but it’s still a big step for me to buy a basic top for $14.



Something to rememebr and strive for.



I also decided that as part of my New Year’s Resolution I was going to start treating myself like the most important person in my life. This goes hand-in-hand with my Thirty Life Crisis, as I need to spend money on more grown-up things and act my age. For example, on Monday I got my hair trimmed and followed the “every six to eight weeks” rule for the first time ever (I was a more of every six to eight months kind of girl). And I quit my cheap ass gym and spent some extra money to join a really nice gym with more classes and fewer creeps.

These changes have already boosted my confidence more than I had expected they would. When my ex-boyfriend texted me that he missed me, I didn’t even feel the need to write back or give it a second thought. I love and respect myself more now than to do that. Something I would not have had done a couple months ago. Now whether or not these things are all connected, who knows. But I'm going with it.

I am looking forward to everything 2013 and the age of 30 will bring me. I just have to make sure I keep making the changes and acting my age. And embrace them as good changes and not a scary life crisis.