The big three-oh

So I turned 30 while at the potential slowing down of the quarantine. As I write this CA has lifted it's restrictions for fully vaccinated people and as my last post said myself and my family are fully vaxed. I had a birthday last year in the middle of it, so I was thinking that I should not count this year right, technically I am still 29, but that is not how time works, even though time is a construct. What is a reminder for certain of my age is my body, I fully feel that my body is now fits with the actual "old soul" that I was describe myself when I was in HS, oh how naïve to the world I was then. In addtion to physically feeling older, I also have different expectations for things and people, as to expect with age, as well as some body aches. I asked my mom what she was like when she was 30 and she said, “oh mijo ya tenia tres hijos, so I was trying to make money to feed y’all.” When I asked my dad he was pointing out the ways that he had to work harder than anyone he knew when he was my age and just ranted for an hour... While both of those interactions were letting me know that I am a very different 30 than they were and it is a very different time. My parents divorced when I was 4 which was also when they were in their early to mid thirties; so that gives me some insight on how things were, but that story and the implications of that in a different post (this is a semi happy, modest post).

I am a very different 30 than my parents were, according to some media and coloquial language, I am a geriatric millennial, and a product of the most advertised and marketed children in America to date. So it makes sense that consumerism is conditioned and it’s taking work to unlearn that. Also as a different 30, this is an economy where most people can’t afford to purchase a home on their own, when in the past they could, resources aside. I am different 30 because I have the internet to look things up and I have adaptability, and know how to use technology. In addition to that, I think that I have the ability to apply some of the awareness (or hypervigilance) that I have learned while growing up as a child of immigrant parents and anxious. Also the older I get the less I really know about the world and some things I know better than my parents, and some things they defs were right about.

So happy birthday to me as I imagine what I want my life to be like, I choose happiness.