28 & Counting

You spend your whole life looking forward to what will happen next. At a young age you just want to know what will happen in the next hour. When you are a teenager you just can't wait to be out of the underclassmen status and into the upper classmen and then to graduation to get out of High School forever but still you haven't even begun to imagine life after HS. Then you begin college and you spend so much time planning the next 5 year... getting through college with the degrees you strive for and getting that dream job. And then life after schooling is over or mostly over is a whole other story.

For one, I am having a hard time believing that in 2 months it will have been 10 years since I was in HS. How the HELL did that happen? And yes, it sort of makes me question what I have done with my life. I mean, I look at my yearbook and can count the people that have kids (not me), the people that are married (not me), the people that have been divorced (obviously not me), the people that have travelled (maybe me a little), the people that have been to Iraq, and the people that are no longer with us. I know that I have made alot of my life and I am very happy with where I am... but is it fair to say that this is the time of your life that you just suddenly say... what have I done?

Then there is the big birthday. Ok, contrary to my Dad thinking I was 30 already... I did only just turn 28... but you know what that means. Now I look at what I have done and what is still ahead and wonder if I have wasted time. I know that on one end I have travelled a bit and plan/hope to travel more in the next year or so... all of which will be more difficult once the "settle down" stage kicks in. But on the flip side... while everyone else is getting married, having babies, and making homes... i am still wandering. I think in the long run I will be happy because I have taken the time to live my life and get accustomed to who I am and what I want from life. I think I am just starting to realize that I am getting to "a point".

Every year on your birthday, the one question you get from everyone is: "so, do you feel older today?". This year my answer was not that I felt older (because lack of sleep for a couple days any year makes me feel older) but that I felt more grown up. I now feel that I have to start getting serious. My little sister is married and having that "start a family" itch. My mom is getting REmarried and is happy as a seventeen year old. I need to start getting serious about what I am doing with my life. "There is no rush" is true until one day you wake up and you are too old to have kids, or can only have one if you are lucky enough to make that. One day you are so old that if you do have kids you are 65 when they graduate HS. One day I just want to be able to have it all and not regret and not miss out. Can you have all of that? It is all just more real when you put into perspective that in less than 2 years I will be 30... 30 (did you get that)... 3 - 0! And when you really want time to fine the right person and be with them before you have kids too... this just can't happen in 2 years so at this point I am looking well beyond that or maybe not... anything is possible. Today must just be a day where things look impossible or far from reach.

I guess I have already stuck threw listening to everyone else's opinions in their own lives - not applied to me but they are said to me... "..don't want to be 30 and just starting to have kids" - "my friend wanted to live life and find the perfect man and now she is 42 and single((chuckles))" ... and the worst part is the "couples and kids" gatherings that you just don't qualify for yet making you either the odd-ball friend or the "babysitter" so your mom friends have time to think while they "spend" time with you.

So now I am just wondering... what to do first and it is worth the worry? When should I start seriously counting days?