How does it feel to be thirty? I wrote about my experience here– on the day I turned thirty.

Now that I’m thirty one (and 5 days) do I feel any different? Today I was thinking about it, in a moment of meditation at my job, and I think that the biggest difference is simply taking things for granted and letting things get stale. When I turned thirty, everything felt new and different and now that I’m thirty one, my biggest fear is that things won’t be exciting anymore.

At thirty, even the “bad” things were new and something to explore. These “bad” things included:

• Being single for the first time in about 8 years (give or take 4 months)
• Having to suddenly move after becoming single
• Dealing with still having student loans at thirty
• Starting to meditate for the first time ever and feeling like I was “bad” at it
• Starting my retirement account only a year before and feeling like I was super behind
• Dealing with not knowing what my career path is by age thirty

Now that I’m thirty one and am still dealing with most of these things, there’s a new stigma- it’s not just not exactly knowing what to do in my thirties, it’s STILL not knowing what to do in my thirties. But I think the biggest lesson and new part of thirty one so far is that everything that feels old is actually new. The challenges and exciting things about thirty one…and the continuing thirties years, are to get even more involved in “old” feelings and occurrences and to know that everything is new.

Even though my biggest fears are to not move forward and discover new things as the thirties continue, I know that’s actually not physically possible. We’re always moving forward and every day we are different people with different cells- our body has almost entirely replaced itself in new cells within 7-10 years. Our skin takes about 2-4 weeks to be completely new. Our stomach and intestines take only about 5 days to have completely different cells. We can’t actually stay in one place or go backwards or repeat.

So I must have faith that as thirty one begins, what feels stale is actually never-before-seen. Let the year begin.