My birthday is less than a month away now. It falls on Easter this year. It’s fallen on or around Easter several times before, but the most memorable Easter themed birthday celebration was in 1985. My sister was born less than a month before it and even though my birthday was technically the day after Easter this particular year, I celebrated it in my Easter dress with a bunny shaped cake and egg hunting. 

The fact that I’m turning thirty this year feels a bit depressing. How have three decades of my life passed so quickly? Why do I feel like the last ten especially never even really happened? In my mind, I still feel a lot more like I’m twenty than about to turn thirty. What does it mean to be thirty? Do I have to start officially acting older? Will birthdays ever hold the excitement they always have for me again after this one?

I remember turning twenty-five and feeling like I was already having some sort of mid-life crisis. My life, as I’d planned it, was nowhere near where I thought it’d be by twenty-five. As I’m about to turn thirty, it still isn't. I have to admit this bothers me more than I wish it did.

I try to remind myself that life just happens. You can plan small bits of it, but it doesn't mean it will completely turn out that way. There are other factors that play into how your life turns out. No matter how hard you try to have absolute control of it, the truth is you don’t. These reminders feel harder to swallow with every year I age though. I feel like time is slipping away from me and if I don’t do something to somehow trap it and slow it down soon, it will be over before I know it. I don’t want to have reached the end with zero accomplishments under my belt, or none of the goals I’d hoped to achieve in life complete.

If I could go back to little kid Sarah and give her some advice, it’d be to: Stop wishing you were older so much. It’s not all that glamorous. And all those years you spent wishing for a future you’d later find was nothing like you imagined could have been better spent enjoying being a kid. Something you will miss terribly when you actually are older.

We grow up too fast, in my opinion. Turning thirty, already…. it feels like it happen overnight almost. *sigh* I hope my negative outlook doesn't ruin the day when it finally arrives.

  
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