There’s something about my birthday that reminds me that I’m a writer. I think it’s the fact that birthdays tend to make us introspective and when I get introspective, my words spill out over the page. At that point, might as well share what I’ve got, since I’ve gone through the work of translating the messiness of a thoughtful, spiraling consciousness into a comprehensive string of words that another human being might stand a chance of translating into a meaningful thought.

Anyway, I turn 29 this month. My first blog post was in relation to my 28th birthday, so it seems only natural to want to commemorate my 29th the same way. The blog I wrote regarding my 28th birthday was on the fear of falling behind, of the years passing me by so fast and feeling like I was swimming through molasses beneath them, trying to keep up and failing. As I turn 29, I’m not here to tell you I’ve grown past those feelings. It’s been a year and while I’ve grown and changed, I’m still the same person.

But that doesn’t mean I haven’t learned a ton. Not just in the last year but in the 29 years of my life. And to prove it to myself, I wrote down just 29 of the things I have learned.

As a little kid, my favorite color was pink and I had a “princess” aesthetic going on in my bedroom. But when I was 6, all the girls around me were playing soccer and softball and the most popular favorite color was blue. So I followed suit.

It took me years to learn I didn’t have to do something just because everyone else was doing it. And even longer to figure out that I could participate on both ends of the sporty-frilly spectrum.

I am both soft and hard. I love wearing dresses and the color pink. I also love wearing the looks with combat boots. I love going boxing only to return home and cuddle a kitty. Life is too short and too wild to limit the experience by being only one thing with the time you have.

I want to be a writer. That usurps most of the choices in my life. The first question I always ask when I face a decision is: “How does this impact my dreams?”

It means my goals and ambitions may be a different than the average of those surrounding me. That doesn’t make them less.

There are still days I need to remind myself what I want. By existing in the world, you hear a lot of voices telling you what you should want. The fancy house. The break at the beach. Every streaming service or the more expensive line of clothes. I should want to be at the top of my field or the time working is ill-spent.

Those voices are sometimes louder in my head than my own.

So I come back to this lesson when I grow lost. I ask myself what I want and what matters to me. And it’s hard. It’s still hard. But it’s my life.

Why do we cry at funerals? Why do we get married? Why have kids or adopt a pet? What will you be proudest of at the end of your life?

Love. It’s love. It’s always been love.

Like most human beings, I hate yearly reviews. I want to be graded but only if I’m being told I’m the best thing since sliced bread. Anything even a fraction less sends me spiraling. I’m too invested in wanting to be loved by literally everyone, no exceptions.

But sometimes, someone won’t love you. Sometimes, someone will actually think very little of you. And you will have to swallow that hatred.

But it does not change the truth of who you are. You are not less because someone thinks less of you.

Writing is the way the world makes sense to me. When there is nonsense or tragedy, I string it together into a shape I can comprehend. But sometimes, that shape is an absurdly elaborate metaphor that requires well over 200 pages.

I must be a novelist.

I drew for the first time in years in the last year. I also DNF’d (did not finish) books I didn’t like. Both of these things were incredible demonstrations of progress in learning myself and being brave enough to be that person. Neither of these things were measurable. But they were progress.

No matter who you are or what you do, someone will find a reason to dislike you. As a child (and even now, let’s be honest), I was/am a fan of Sonic the Hedgehog. It made me feel alive and free and wildly joyful to be a fan of something like that. People disliked me for that, made fun of me for that, didn’t want to play with me for that, so I tamped down that joy.

What an awful way to live that was.

Be brave enough to be wildly joyful. It is an act of rebellion that you deserve.

In high school, I told myself I didn’t want to take too many pictures, because it took me away from living in the moment. Now, I don’t have a lot of pictures of high school and a lot of the memories outside the biggest moments have faded.

I graduated high school fewer than 10 years ago and this is already happening.

I took more pictures in 2020 and 2021 than I ever did in high school. And when I get mixed up and muddled over my memories of lockdown, I scroll through the pictures. Reflect on how much I’ve grown and how much I’ve experienced and how grateful I am for those things.

Take the picture. It crystalizes the moment.

Have you seen the world? A lot of it kind of sucks. There’s so much hate. There’s so much fear. And for a long time, I dealt with that through anger. After all, how can you process all of the world without at least the low hum of anger inside of you?

You only have one life, though. And you can’t make the world better by being mad at it.

In high school, I applied to my dream part-time job and didn’t get it. It broke my heart. But it gave me the opportunity to try out for show choir. And make it. A dream I had hardly dared to dream.

In 2019, I made the goal to write over 500 hours and succeeded. By writing a very important story wrong so many times that I gave up writing it. Then, a year after giving up on the novel, I accidentally found the way to fix it. It took far fewer than 500 hours.

Failure is not always bad. Success is not always good. Keep learning about yourself in these moments.

I read a lot more nonfiction now than I ever did growing up. The job I do now at work is not one I learned about in college. I spend everyday learning more about myself and how to arrange that person.

On the bright side, no midterms.

I don’t mind cancelled plans. As long as I’m not the one cancelling them. If I planned to work out tonight but I got sick, I am at times inconsolable. I don’t adapt well to changed plans that feel like personal failure.

I am learning to forgive myself for changing my plans and for being a human being.

I used to wear makeup to look pretty. Now, I wear makeup to feel pretty. There’s a difference. In the first version, I wouldn’t go out without makeup on. Now, I go out either way. But wow, glitter eyeshadow is fun.

At some point, in some series of circumstances, I learned that I needed to finish what I started to be a good person. It wasn’t true.

In college, I joined a co-ed scholastic fraternity for all the wrong reasons. I had free time, I wanted letters on my sweatshirt, etc. By my second year as part of the fraternity, I realized I hated it because my heart ached to be elsewhere. I realized I was counting down the days until college graduation so that I could be done with it.

Then I learned I could resign and not be a bad person. Honestly, this was the most important thing I learned in college.

Grow up (according to the society expectations in my head): Get a job, don’t watch cartoons, get a house, get a spouse, get a kid, go on impressive trips, meet impressive people, die rich, be remembered.

Grow up (a more true definition): Be responsible for yourself, ask questions, be curious, love yourself and the world and demonstrate that by taking care of things, figure out what you need and what you want and when those things are worth it, love and love and love

Enough said. The amount of joy you have doing this is enough explanation.

Like a lot of people, I grew up relatively privileged, in the sense that I had a safe space to live and food to eat and I didn’t have to think too much about racism and sexism, to the point that I thought that they were little more than topics in social studies.

Not true.

Even as I did face sexism, at the very least to a casual extent, as a child, I had to learn prejudice is very real and present. As it turns out, those conversations are still going on, will continue going on. I’ve read books that continue to educate me on how society was constructed to support prejudice. I’m still learning.

Keep listening. Keep learning.

I have a list of the things I would save in a fire. I don’t know why this is the sort of thing I think about to relax in the evening, but that’s where my brain takes me. Obviously, me and my cat make the list. But then the list gets more interesting. The only reason I’d save my laptop is to save my novels.

And then there’s this tiny little toy that is the last thing my grandfather gifted me before he passed away.

My list is very small.

There was a time when I was in high school that I really believed I would never finish a novel. I started writing plenty of them, sure, but getting to “THE END” was a brutal test. I thought, if I could just finish what I started, then I would stand a chance.

Now today, I’ve written the first draft of 11 books. Start to finish. And I can say with confidence that writing the book is not the hardest part.

The hardest part is a long list but nowhere on the list is writing the book. Maybe editing the book. Maybe battling self doubt. Sometimes, it’s battling the guilt tactics the cat is using to get pet when you’re just trying to type. It’s also how many times you’re told “no” when you send out query letters and how many times you tell yourself “no” with all that imposter syndrome.

Writing a book is just the beginning.

Did you know the Constitution of the United States was written by people?

I know, crazy, right?

People also made up the rules regarding the schooling system. Or how to plan a wedding. Or traffic systems.

We all only have this one single life. There’s no one who has some absurdly higher qualification because they have lived hundreds of years longer. They too just have this one life.

It’s freeing and terrifying.

I think it’s in late middle school that a lot of people start holding their breath. It’s at that point that we become aware of the people around us. We pay attention to what we wear and what it reflects about us. We pay attention to the activities we participate in and how people might judge us for those things.

But if we’re all thinking about ourselves, then who is watching who?

Exactly.

Like I mentioned before, I read a lot more nonfiction now than I ever did in school. Plus, I’ve spent about a year and a half learning Polish and just jumped into French. I never thought I would try to learn a language, not after taking three years of French in high school and thinking I was bad at it, despite grades that said otherwise.

Learning new things is way more fun when no one is judging you and you can spend the time that you used to spend learning how to present yourself as smart on actually learning.

My cat Kaz has the special talent of being absolutely unable to avoid destroying my couch.

I bought a sectional this year. It’s my first very nice couch. My first couch was from Target and my second was from Wayfair. This sectional I actually had to go to a furniture store and customize my selection.

I gave up on keeping the cat from clawing my couch about two days into owning it.

Kaz seems to have designated a particular corner of the sectional as his scratching post. He dashes over to it when he’s overwhelmed with emotion when playing and he needs to get it out. Or when I come home and he’s trying to be taller so I pet his head.

And my heart melts. And I know it more important to have this expression of joy and love in him than something like a couch in perfect condition.

The bane of adulthood is that you actually have to do your chores. If you don’t, your mom won’t do them for you. But the second lesson no one warned me about what how to figure out how to stop worrying about cleaning. “Clean enough” is real.

One of the most popular “getting to know you questions” is, “Would you rather vacation at the beach or in the mountains?” And as much as I love the waterfront, my response is always mountains. Because I must be among the trees. My apartment has a view of beautiful wild trees. It is now a requirement of wherever I live in the future.

This one is weird to learn. I hate asking anyone for anything. A recommendation letter? The worst. A promotion? I’d rather cry in public (and do!). But when you ask the question, “Why?” The answer is, “They might say no.”

So?

That’s the worst case scenario?

That’s survivable.

A lot of my report cards growing up reported I could do better at controlling my emotions. I have cried publicly at work before (I try not to but it’s happened). But you know what? It doesn’t make me weak.

I am not strong for holding in my tears. In fact, that’s what makes me very weak. The tears spill out inside me and grief twists me into a creature that no longer believes happiness possible if I dare to hold the tears inside. Crying outside of my body allows me to tell someone else they hurt me, that I’m hurting, and that allows me to let go.

That’s not weakness. That’s knowledge.

Though I would not recommend crying publicly at work if you can avoid it. It still feels pretty yucky when you’re done.

I keep losing people. Everyone keeps losing everyone. Life is life because someday it ends. And I’m amazed, even in the midst of being distraught, that this ending feels different every single time.

You will never be used to it.

But it means you loved.

And love is all that matters.

…

Even as I am turning 29, I am not under an impression that I am considered aged with experience. But I also no longer feel exceptionally young. I feel both, sometimes. I’ve learned so much and I have so much left to learn. Most of all, I have learned that this is the only life I’ve got. I’m as human as everyone else around me. And if my writing might be able to help you in this journey too, it’s worth it to share.