When did it happen?

I wonder when I got "old". Was there a line I crossed over, a form I signed, a box I ticked, a passage I went through, a birthday I had?

I can't help but peg it on turning 30. Something really did happen to me. Don't get me wrong. I don't at all identify as "being old". I resist being told to "grow up" or to, this is the one that really gets my old granny whiskers up, - "act your age". I want to always remain "young at heart" which to me means to always have curiosity about the world, to yearn for and embark upon adventures, to act impulsively and always want to learn and grow.

But something has still happened. Yeah, I want to act impulsively, but not all the time, and I also now want to plan a little more and have a little more solid ground beneath me feet. Yeah, I want to embark upon adventures, but maybe not ones that take two years, and I maybe want to make sure I have, I dunno, money. Yeah, that's it. I think I have passed the point of being willing to throw in a job and take off with a pack on my back, spend every dollar and come home with nothing. But is that just about money, or is it security or is it both and more?

And there is more. I don't feel like going out every Friday and Saturday and sometimes Thursday night, just because it is a weekend. In fact, there has to be a really good band or a really good friend waiting for me to entice me out now.

I need to stretch and warm up and cool down properly now before I exercise, or I tear or break or hurt something. I reflect more. Pause more. Plan more. This could all be labelled "getting old". But it could also be labelled "growing". Labels (or 'tags') can be powerful things.

The other thing that is interesting is that these are all internal shifts rather than imposed changes. In my 20's I was a 30's sceptic. I thought I would continue living the way I was and I would NOT change just cause society told me I should. I criticised friends in their 30's for deciding they were too old to party, for instance. I thought it was lame. Now I see it from the 'other side' (heheh).

On that note. Here's a whinge (and what I set out to write about in the first place): Just before I got married I was getting my hair done and talking to the hairdresser about my wedding (cause that's what hairdressers like to talk about). The hairdresser was 18 or 19 at the very oldest. After the expected questions about what I would be wearing and where the wedding would be, came an unexpected one that just about knocked me to the floor to roll about with all my cut-off hair.

"Is this your first wedding?"

And then, when I did not respond to this, she tried to change the topic (perhaps misinterpreting my silence as proof that it was my tenth wedding and I was embarrassed about it).

"Do you have any kids?"

Here's to blogging it all out

I have been away for a while. The shock of being thrust out of travel mode in to limbo land and then in to work has meant that I have totally neglected this blog. I got married somewhere in there too, which was a phenomenally huge focus. But, I have missed this thing... and I want it back. So Here I am!

I was recently chatting with my friend Heather, and life has also kept her away from her blog, which she likewise misses. We decided we were going to play a blog version of the old word game where you write a paragraph and then fold the paper over and give the next person the last word. We are going to do that with our blogs, and when we get the last word from the other, we need to start a new entry with that word. (And not allowed to read the most recent of each other's posts first). Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Here's to blogging it all out!