“Thirty, flirty, and thriving.”
It was more than a decade ago, on a random night. You spent the night watching 13 Going on 30 (2004) on the bulky grey TV in the living room until past midnight. Your parents were basically sick of asking you to go to bed early so you could get to school on time (it somehow became a bad habit you still haven’t broken now). Back then, your 10-year-old self was too captivated by the 13-year-old Jenna Rink living her dream adult life in her 30-year-old body. It looked so much fun for a kid who would only realize years later that the cute guy you had a crush on in that movie was a young Mark Ruffalo. Jenna Rink had everything you imagined for your adult life: a job as a fashion magazine editor, being pretty, making money, wearing colorful dresses, being unbothered by other adults, getting whatever you wanted, even marrying your boy best friend.
“I can’t wait to be 30,” you thought softly and naively.
You didn’t have the slightest idea that the reality of making money is far from the fun of watching those two lovely characters dancing along to Michael Jackson’s iconic “Thriller” choreography—and there is no Mark Ruffalo standing beside you.
People always say you should choose a job you love so you will never have to work a day in your life, and you thought you had chosen that job. Well, it might have seemed and looked fun at first, but it eventually wore on you. Now you start to wonder if every job gets boring after three months. But it was your first job, after all.
Now and then, you feel like you failed your future before you even lived it. But you are forgetting that you just started living last year. It was your first time living by yourself. You paid rent to live decently under a random person’s roof. You sometimes cooked meals for one. You went and explored unfamiliar places you’ve never been to. You hiked a mountain you never thought you would ever possibly scale. You traveled to a new city that had never crossed your 10-year-old self’s mind (sorry, it’s not New York yet). You didn’t realize you were collecting a bunch of “firsts”.
No one gets to decide if you fail at life. What makes you think that just because you are nowhere near thirty, flirty, and thriving, you won’t be thirty, flirty, and thriving when you get to that point in life?
You try to ask yourself positive questions like these because, deep down in your heart, you do want to make it past thirty. You want to see what’s going to happen next. You need to know how you are going to make it. The future is undeniably uncertain, and you can’t predict anything except to do the best you can and hope things get better. You are living just in case things get better.
And they will get better.
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