Predictions

I happen to like my birthday. No matter that it mainly brings full circle the fact and knowledge that I am an entire year older than the previous one. I like the idea of having a day to celebrate my age. To celebrate all the days gone by in the previous year. To take stock of where life sits at this minute in time. And of course a chance to be pampered silly by V, friends and family.

Turning 33 was way scarier than turning 32. At the 32 mark all I could think was ‘Ooh, early 30’s. It’s the new 20’s. I love my life. Yay!’. It was when the conversations in my head walked past the half year mark that I started to panic a little. 33 sounded like a wayward island – past the early 30s, not quite mid 30’s yet, an inbteween floating bit of land on which to stand stranded till arescue boat came by for those mid-thirties. 33 just did not bring the same feelings up as turning 32 at all. In the run up to July the fifteenth I had a month of angst. And this was beside the contemplation of how the year had gone by. These are two completely separate things. Reflection I can do. Its angst about turning 33 I cannot. I’m too old (haha!). And I’m too young to have a mid-life crisis just yet.

After much thought I came to the conclusion that for me 33 is a bit of a no woman’s land, a straddling between being legitimately early 30’s and mid-30’s. I think it’s the unique year in which there is the chance to evaluate how the start of the 30’s has gone and whether there are some changes I should be making or plans I should still stick to for when I go into the mid-levels at 34. 33 sounds busy.

It’s abundantly clear in my mind that when asked my age I can no longer say early thirties. Or even mid-thirties. I think this year if I am asked my age I’ll have to just face up to it and declare I’m 33. I think declaring my precise age out loud is the stone amidst the basket of rice.

Reflections of 32 were mixed. It’s been a year of halves if ever there was one. I’m not going to rehash what I wrote at the turn of the year. But I can declare that the second half of 32 outweighed the first by more than a few miles. At base I have a strong awareness that I have a good solid life, filled with so many blessings that I wake up most days thinking how lucky I am and praying it will last forever. Of course there are days when things look slightly less shiny, things one continues to want, unreasonable demands from the universe etc., but fewer and further between. I think the greatest gift the second half of being 32 brought me was the realisation that I had the ability, willpower and head space to reach a zen place and stop trying to change things which I had no real ability to control or address. And this in itself has taken all the less shiny things and made them inconsequential.

As for turning 33, I think, all said and done, the ambiguity of being in no-womans-land-33 will soon dissipate. I predict sunshine at 33.