So I’m going to be 30 years old in about a week and the good news is I’m not going to cry on my birthday this year. I’m actually so happy to be turning 30 - it’s a big birthday and one that I fully intend to celebrate and embrace.

I’ve mentioned it before, but getting older for me has always been a complicated feeling. In and amongst the omni-present pressure of keeping up with the rest of the proverbial 30-year-old Joneses, there’s the regrets, sentimentality, awareness of my own mortality, and physical aging that make me wish I could be 18 again. But at the same time, each year I get older, the more mature, adventurous, successful, and autonomous I become, which propels me forward yet another year.

In reflecting on my 30 years, I originally thought I’d write some 30-themed list for the occasion. But that feels like a trend that belongs in 2010s, instead I had the brilliant idea to revisit my 25 Things I Should Have Learned By 25, But Haven't post and see how many of the things I thought I should have learned by then that I’ve actually learned by now.

Admittedly, I began this post almost in jest, assuming I would look back on five years younger me and relate to her so much. I thought I’d be sitting here and writing a tongue-and-cheek post about how I still haven’t figured anything out and how I’m barely wiser now than I was back then, but that actually isn’t the case.

In reading through the reflections of my 25-year-old self, I noticed a surprising trend: over the last five years, I’ve gotten so many of those “should haves” down. I floss; I am ten times more comfortable in my own skin, and I can even put on my bra behind my back now. If I use that list as a definitive grading scale of how I’m doing in life, I’m a solid A- student, and that’s always been good enough for me.

There’s a lesson in there somewhere, isn’t there? Maybe it has never been about when you learn something, but rather instead that you just learn it eventually.

Come to think of it, I don’t understand why I thought I’d be even close to where I was back then. I saw a TikTok recently that, despite being filmed by one of the more un-relatable women on the app, was amazingly relatable in this instance, basically asking if anyone else feels like a totally different person than they were a number of years past in their life, and I most certainly do.

My mom says that I have and old soul and my husband thinks I’ve been an “grown up” since I was a little kid, but I think they’re both wrong.

There’s an age-old debate: do people change? I think those who say people don’t are being intentionally obtuse, and at 30, I’m too old to have the time for this kind of thinking.

I’m 30 years old. I’ve seen 30 years worth of things, both good and bad, and they shape my every thought and behavior from here on out. I’ve heard it said once that everywhere you go you take with you wherever you’ve been. And if that’s true, then I’ll carry younger Jami’s lessons with me forever.

I don’t know much about the age of my soul, but I do that I’m more “grown up” now than I ever was.

I may still not know how to end a fight without having the last word, or how to change my own tire if it should go flat, but I can put my bra on without putting it over my head and that’s what getting older is all about.

Write on,

Jami