This morning, I started my thirty-ninth trip around the sun. I woke up at 5AM feeling an abundance of joy and gratitude, (something I try to make a conscious effort to work through everyday), but today it was just overwhelming- a great, float-y way to start a morning. Nothing is even particularly in order at the moment, but I’ve come to accept that this is the way of life and enjoy the now.

Aside from the last few days leading up to the birthday, I wasn’t sure how I would feel about the last year of my 30’s, but it feels quite right, actually. When I think back to all that’s happened…so many exciting things in the last decade…. I’m glad this year, pointing (hopefully) closer and closer towards the midpoint is feeling this way. Twenty-nine definitely did not. Twenty-nine was an anxiety-inducing year. On the precipice of a new decade paired with an extremely tumultuous time in my life, I was reallllllly not into this year and crossing the threshold of a new decade. Thirty was fine; twenty-nine, terrible. So, I wasn’t really sure how this one would go, but turns out she’s a lovely surprise worth the wait.

So cheers to continued life design, living in the moment, celebrating the little things, and aging gracefully into this next trip around the sun. To mark the occasion, I’ve reread some favorite passages from Glennon Doyle’s, “Untamed.” Here’s the fan favorite:

“I understand now that no one else in the world knows what I should do. The experts don’t know, the ministers, the therapists, the magazines, the authors, my parents, my friends, they don’t know. Not even the folks who love me the most. Because no one has ever lived or will live this life I am attempting to live, with my gifts and challenges and past and people. Every life is an unprecedented experiment. This life is mine alone. So I have stopped asking people for directions to places they’ve never been. There is no map. We are all pioneers.”