With age comes wisdom?

I crossed some weird threshold this week… I turned 30. I am not sure how I supposed to feel about that. Some people ask me how I feel… I feel fine. I have to go to the bathroom right now, but other than that, I am perfectly content.

When I was in my early twenties (ok, that’s feels odd to say), I had some pre-conceived notion about what one’s life SHOULD look like at 30. I imagined a strong career, husband, no kids, a cute 2-story house with a delightful backyard in some perfect Chicago suburb. I had every intention of achieving that picture, and for most of it, I did. I have (what I consider to be) a strong career, no kids, and I live in a Chicago suburb. I have a wonderful man who has been in my life for a long time, but not as a husband. I have a 2-bedroom apartment. Have I met my goal?

This is a question that plagued me for a few days. I kept thinking that I had not achieved my goals. I am not married and I don’t own a house. This really started to bother me. I have an awesome career with an awesome company. I’ve been with the same person for a number of years. We talk about how we will get married and spend the rest of our lives together. That counts for something, right? Does it count for enough? I couldn’t come to a conclusion. I felt unsettled.

In, what can best be described as, “my funk,” I finally reached a conclusion. It’s something that I’ve known all along. I am perfectly content in my life. The image that I had created was the visual of the word “contentment.” It took a few days before I reconciled my current feeling of contentment with the image that I had created a decade ago. I was close and, this time, “close” counts.
So, what have I learned? Contentment is not achieving some pre-determined goal. Contentment is how we react to any given circumstance. I learned that I make my own decisions, some good and some not so good. All of them have a result. If I can come to terms with the results, then I will be content. With that, I’ve determined my single goal for the next decade – contentment.

Greetings & Saluations

So after much consideration, I have decided to take the leap and join the masses in the pool of bloggers. Not so much because I have so much to say, or that anyone wants to read it, but as an electronic record of the random thoughts that cross my mind. Who knows, maybe I'll get a chuckle out of these entries at some point.

Thank you Brian for unknowingly pushing me in.