From a Thirty-Something to a Twenty-Something

Yesterday I turned 34. I'm honestly a happier person than I have ever been before, and I feel like each year of my life keeps getting better and better. It is not just my optimistic thinking that has made me happier, but a whole combination of things I have been learning over many years, some of which is from books and some from within myself.  

I remember when I was 26 and was working with a couple of women in their thirties when we started talking about growing older. They both unanimously agreed being in your 30's beat being in your 20's by a long shot. "You know yourself more, you have confidence, you don't waste time with things or people that aren't good for you, and you have more money!" At the time I had little sense of identity, a waning confidence, was not living with people on my wavelength, and no career direction, so not much money. I eagerly looked forward to turning 30, and I have to say: I have not been disappointed!

My Circa Nocturna outfit: My Shanghai Seduction mini-hat,

a silk top from a market in Cambodia,

a satin skirt with feather trim from the label Catwalk Collection from a London goth shop,

and my favorite pin-up style patent shoes by NaNa. 

Now that I am 4 years into my 30's, I feel I have some authority to share what I have learned to help younger women figure some things out for themselves, and avoid some nasty things about aging:

• On Careers:  The saying "do what you love" IS the best advice. It means: don't do what you think will make your parents happy, don't do what you think will pay the most, don't do what you think is the highest calling to please your inner feminist or environmentalist--all the wrong moves I made. It means: DO what you spend most of your leisure time pursuing, what you lose track of time doing, what you started doing when you were 7 years old, what you are secretly good at or want to become very good at. For me, it was making jewelry, NOT novel-writing, which I thought was my calling until I realized I crafted more often than I wrote.
• On Travel: Don't wait, don't wait, don't wait. Don't wait for a girlfriend to join you, don't wait for your boyfriend to join you, don't wait to build a huge savings, don't wait for the economy to get better or for the perfect job to open up for you overseas. Do it NOW, while you are single, while you are not a mother, while you can get student and youth discounts all over the planet, while you can get work visas (over 30 you are too old), while you will fit into a youth hostel and will want to party or travel on with the other young folks you meet there, while you can work in a chalet in Canada, a bar in Tokyo, a kibbutz in Israel, pick grapes in Australia, au pair in France, learn Spanish in Guatemala, and just generally do the work that you can to continue your journey. Travel is life's greatest teacher and you should learn to do it on your own as it will teach you about yourself and make you a more open-minded, resourceful person. It is one thing I got exactly right in my 20's.
• On Relationships: Have many. Do not get upset when you have yet another break-up at 27. The 20's are about getting together and breaking up. You are working out who is right for you and there is nothing wrong with ending a 3 year relationship if you are not happy. It is hard to hurt someone, or be hurt, but it is better for your and his future happiness, so be a realist, and do not have bridal fantasies before you even have an idea of a proper boyfriend. Know your "deal breakers". The three big lessons I have about relationships, having now found my Mr. Right, are these: 1. Values are more important than having similar interests. The way to check for similar values is simply to see how similar his lifestyle is to yours, because lifestyle is a reflection of values. My last boyfriend was a carbon copy of me in terms of interests, but in terms of values and lifestyle we were very different people. 2. DO NOT, and I REPEAT, DO NOT move in with your man until at least a year has past, if not longer. No matter how head over heels addicted to him you are, this is a mistake! It is hard to know your boundaries when you live with a guy, and in your 20's you are still working on your boundaries, so you need space. Living together will prolong bad relationships, alienate your friends, and tie you down. DO live with a guy sometime in your 20's, just do not move in right away with anyone! 3. Do not neglect your friends. They will still be there long after the many boys are gone. Spend time with them, and really listen to what they say about your boyfriend. They  know you best and have your interests at heart.
• On Health: If you are in a long, committed relationship and you are on the pill, get off it. Get an IUD or something else, as the pill will leach magnesium from your body and increase your likelihood of cellulite, which is caused by nutritional deficiencies and additives in food. Your doctor will tell you an IUD is better for women who have had children, and that it will cause some pain to insert. Your doctor is informed by pharmaceutical companies and is going to talk you into anything that makes more money for the health business. Most women outside western nations use an IUD because it costs less. It is $30 and lasts 5 years compared to the pill which is $20 every four months. I may be wrong on this, as I have done my own research, but it does not take much looking into the way healthcare operates to see that it is often more about money than the best options for patients. So decide for yourself.
• On Confidence: Confidence will increase as friendships increase. I have crossed over from extreme wallflower to sometimes, extreme extrovert. I use to believe shyness was a personality trait that cannot be changed. It is not a personality trait, it is a habit. It is a bad habit that can be broken with practice and strategic application and increased social awareness. It is true for all types of people that social confidence begins with being able to read people, and there are lots of books out there to help you with interpersonal skills. Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence by Daniel Goldman are my favorites, and were truly life-changing books for me. It is hilarious to me that after suffering with shyness for so many years I now sometimes have the opposite anxieties, that of wondering if I am being overbearing or too loud! I have met some incredibly charming people in my life who would gain friends quickly but would lose them just as quickly. The problem was that they did not listen to people. Listening is the key to gaining friends, to getting outside yourself and your own insecurities, and to create a lasting rapport and friendship with someone you admire and love. The more people you admire and love in your life, the certainty that one day you will have the thought, "I must be an awesome person because I have so many awesome people in my life." Then you have it, true confidence, not self-centered arrogance.
• On Money: Money is only our life energy exchanged for a price; it is only energy. It is NOT evil, as I use to think. We attach many ideas and beliefs to money, but money is in itself just a potential that can be used for good or bad. It is not evil to save money and desire to be rich. It's smart to save money and desire to be rich! You will have more ability to do all the things you want to do not only for yourself but for others and for the world! Money MUST be studied. Financial literacy is the most important skill you can learn to survive in our tough world, and so few people ever bother to learn this skill. I strongly recommend Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez, another life-changing book for me. He writes about the origin of our mad 40 hour work week, about the relationships between consuming and the environment, and the importance of aligning money to values. He then proposes a plan to reach financial independence through investments, a plan I loved until I learned more about the stock market and began to look more upon that. Now with the advent of the recession, I once again see his humble plan as much wiser than I had previously. I have practiced Joe's advice of writing down every dollar spent on every cup of coffee for 7 years now, and it has made me feel much more in control of my finances, even when there is not much to control!
• On Family: While in the middle of writing this I got a call from my older sister, wishing me a happy birthday, and our conversation made me remember some of the most important lessons that I have learned in my life. You are not an adult until you can begin to see your parents not simply as your parents, but as people. You did not choose your parents but you got who you got anyway, so you must accept that they whatever hand they dealt you as you grew up, and you must learn ways of forgiving them or honoring them outside of what you would have liked to have had growing up, and take the responsibility of your life as yours once you have left their nest and protection. There exists no hand book to parenting. They made mistakes or caused you pain because they are just people, like everyone else, and you need to see them as such and try to take your ego out of the equation. The other lesson it took me a long time to learn is to stop trying to please your parents; live for yourself, not for them. I had "mother' issues until I turned 26, then I finally stopped worrying and became me, which meant being a non-conformist, traveling aimlessly, and refusing to chase work that I did not feel was me, though it would have made my mother happy. I've turned out just fine, as my deep happiness can attest.

I hope that this will be useful to a twenty-something out there. In our modern society we are not surrounded by aunts, grandmothers, and other older women as are ancestors were, and we don't have their advice and foresight to guide us. That is why I read so many books, like ones by Eleanor Roosevelt, Maya Angelou, Anais Nin, and many others, and swear by reading as an excellent way to enrich one's life and learn life strategies. The people who say you can't learn about life from books are the people who don't learn about life from books, and ignoring them and learning about life through both living and reading will get you to a place of greater happiness much faster when you are young.