I'm launching this blog on the eve of my 30th birthday. The look back on my 20s seemed like the perfect genesis for me to tell my story: past, present, and future. Even if I only have one follower (Hi Mom!!!), that's okay too; because one day in the distant future I will be able to reread a lifetime of memories, big and small, told in my own voice to reflect upon. If in the unlikely circumstance my message resonates with a few of you -- that will be the icing on this 30th birthday cake. So without further ado - here is my first ever blog post:
Joyce Carol Oates once wrote: “I never change, I simply become more myself". Something seems so absolute about saying goodbye to my 20s. It's not just because they were the happiest 10 years of my life, or that it's when I got married, or had my first child. It's because I finally felt the freedom to begin finding out who I am and the acceptance to love myself for being me. I didn't change during my 20s, I just found out exponentially more about myself as each year passed.
20 - Patience may be a virtue, but you need to live in the present. Isn't your 20th birthday such a let down? You're not a teenager anymore, but still can't get into college bars without giant' X's' all over your hands. What did I learn from 20 besides that you need to wash off the permanent marker X's before passing out or else they'll be on your drool stained cheek the next morning? Patience. It was my senior year of college and I couldn't wait to stop being in school and get out in the real world. My boyfriend (now husband) had just graduated and was living 5 hours away. Not being able to go out to bars with my friends, being tired of being in school for over 16 years straight, and having a long distance boyfriend just made me constantly wanting to rush the year. I just wish I had appreciated the present more and realized I had a lifetime ahead of me to work, live with Ben, and pay for my own beers.
21 - It feels better to save and spend your own hard earned money instead of money given to you. I got my first real job, Ben and I moved into an apartment together, and we got a dog. All the "growing up" that I had been waiting for was now here and I relished it. I bought my first new car, burnt a bunch of dinners, and slept on second hand furniture. It was the year that taught me how to live on a budget. I spent most of my 21st year being stressed about planning our wedding and how we would be able to afford it. How could we possibly sacrifice on not having fan wedding programs?!? We didn't have a dining room table in that apartment for over 3 months and you know what, we survived. I look back now on how much smaller our salaries were at that point and how much we saved for that big event (in the end not one penny stayed on our credit cards) and am still really proud of us. 
22 - The happily ever shoved down our throats in fairy tales doesn't show us the curveballs that life can throw. We had a beautiful wedding, with the worst DJ, but it didn't matter we were in newlywed bliss…for a month. Life got real really fast. We were married in September and in November his father passed away, Ben was devastated. It was hard seeing a family that I was just brought into hurting so bad, yet still feeling like an outsider. I didn't want to cry infront of him, because I didn't feel like I had the right to. It was a sad, stressful year and I learned that happily ever after doesn't take into account the curveballs that life throws at us we can only try to face it the best way we can.
23 - To truly love someone else is to be able to sometimes put yourself on hold. Ben is set to graduate his Master's program and decides why not spend a few more years in school, so he applies to PhD programs. While he is the one who currently holds the title of Dr., I helped do the research on the best programs, ordered transcripts, looked up housing in different cities, all while realizing that if Ben was going to enter a full-time program that I would need to become the primary financer for the next 3-6 years. All the uncertainty of what I would do about a job, where would we go, seemed overwhelming and certainly caused a few meltdowns on my part. Being able to put myself second didn't come naturally, but I'm glad it did.
24 - Just because you're an adult, doesn't mean you can't have fun. Thankfully, Ben got accepted into his first choice program at the University of Georgia in Athens, GA. I am even more thankful for the fact that my amazing company allowed me to begin to telework so I didn't have to quit my job. We bought our first home and grew our family even more by rescuing a basset hound. Being married for 2 years and working desk jobs, we had both put on some weight. Ben took up running, I hired a trainer and we lost over 50 lbs together. We felt and looked great and would stay out until the late hours of the night partying with our amazing friends. I learned this year that growing up doesn't mean the fun stops...You just may have to work a little harder afterwards to burn those calories off.
25 - There is no shame in admitting when you need help. I debated how much of this I should put out into the open based on the stigma attached to needing therapy. I finally came to the conclusion that if I'm not going to be fully honest with this blog, then it wouldn't be worth writing . Being an extrovert working from home had caused me to feel isolated and resentful towards Ben. I became extremely insecure and started suspecting that he was having an emotional affair with one of his colleagues. The anxiety and distrust caused Ben to then want to hide things even more. I questioned him constantly and cried a lot. I broke down and called a therapist who recommended we start couples counseling. We were taught to listen to what each other were really saying and started to rebuild the trust that was lost. That call I made when I felt at the lowest point in my life changed everything and saved our marriage. We started training for our first full marathon together, and we worked out a lot of our issues on those long runs. Working as a team towards a common goal gave us respect for one another and crossing the finish line holding hands represented how far we had come. PSA - if you feel like you need to talk to someone, please don't be embarrassed to seek help. I wish I had done it sooner and saved myself a lot of tears. 
26 - You have no control over anything in life, you can only choose how you react and roll with the punches. Things obviously did not get better overnight, but by my 26th birthday we were doing much better. So much so, that we started to discuss what our plans were to grow our family beyond our fur children. We had been married for 4 years and I heard faint sounds of my biological clock start ticking. It took my mom a long time to get pregnant with both me and my sister and since we had 8 years of me sometimes forgetting to take my birth control, I was positive it would take us awhile to get pregnant. Surprisingly, we got pregnant right away. The timing was not ideal as we would need to move again to allow Ben to go on his internship year. Realizing that our life decisions would no longer just effect us and the dogs, we were definitely intimidated by leaving our house and starting up somewhere new. With shaky knees and a growing belly we decided to move again and start preparing to be parents.
I also decided to join an online community of
women who were all due in November 2011. Luckily for me they are mostly
extremely sane, supportive, and beautiful people that now over 3 years later
are some of my most trusted confidants. 
27 - Some days will suck, but tomorrow is always a new day to start fresh. I will never
allow Ben to forget this story. We started our move to Tampa the night before
by 27th birthday. We woke up in a shady
motel after a night of bad sleep on a rock hard bed and 2 dogs that nervously paced
the whole night. We were so tied up with
the move that Ben forgot to even wish me a happy birthday or even get me a
card. When we finally got down to Tampa and parked outside the leasing office, his car wouldn't start again. The pregnancy hormones just made me want to turn around and go back to Georgia to my house and friends. The good news- tomorrow is always
another day. The car got fixed, Ben took
me to Thai food and the beach for a belated birthday, and the rest of the year
was much better than that first day. In
November I was lucky enough to give birth to a healthy baby boy that stole my
heart and still hasn't given it back. We
lived in a tiny townhouse, I juggled working from home and trying to figure out
how to keep an infant alive…at the time I felt like every day was just going
through the motions with the lack of sleep.
But tomorrow was always there to start fresh, and every day Caleb grew a
little more, understanding and interacting more with the world around him. But that's the funny thing about being a mom,
you spend so much time watching your children change - you don't stop to
realize how much you've changed and grown as well.
28 - It's okay to
fail. You won't always win at everything you do. When you lose, have a good cry, look at pictures
of basset hounds running on the beach, and then pick yourself back up and start
again. After a year of renting our home
in Georgia, it wasn't financially smart for us to maintain that property knowing now that we would not be returning. Unfortunately for us, the market
had gotten even worse and the house didn't appraise for what the buyers we
were under contract with offered to pay.
With only 4 years of being homeowners, after all the fees and closing
costs we were going to lose money. A lot
of money. I felt embarrassed and like a
failure. I cried a lot and felt like I
couldn't talk to anyone. Clearly we had made a huge mistake, and didn't succeed in the American dream of home ownership. In the end, we decided it was best to admit
defeat, cut our losses and borrow money from my 401K in order to pay back the
bank. This is the lesson I liked the least
of the last decade, but being a perfectionist it may have been the most important one. Sometimes you will fail and when you do, life goes
on. We were living where we wanted to
live, we were both employed and happy with our jobs, and we had the happiest baby
that filled our hearts and that tiny rental townhouse with more love than I honestly ever
thought I deserved. There were times as
a mom where I would get exhausted, or frustrated, or even angry and then feel
like I was failing there too. But if we
were perfect all the time, how could we grow?
What would we learn? It sucks to fail, at things big and small - but don't give up.
29 - You need to
take care of yourself, for yourself. A few months into 29, I found out that dietbet.com was beta testing a 6 month weight loss competition. I still had baby weight to lose and figured what did I have to lose (besides the $125 entry fee). The first month I won with no problem, but I didn't make my required weight for the second month. There were lots of excuses I could have used: it took place over Christmas and New years, and we had just had to put down the little beagle that left 8 years of paw prints on my heart (and couch). The old me would have called this a failure and quit then. I didn't. It made me realize I had to reevaluate my commitment if I wanted to win the rest of the months and the whole thing. I started being honest with myself about my diet, tracking everything I ate on the My Fitness Pal app on my phone. I started actually using the Y membership that I had been paying for and lifting weights multiple times per week. I knocked minutes off of my half marathon PRs (Personal Records) and won $313. After 4 months of healthy eating and regular exercise I knew I wanted to do more, because for once I was excited about fitness not just losing weight. I joined another online challenge, this one one bodybuilding.com to transform your body. I lifted heavier and had fewer cheat meals and got results that I am really proud of. I now want to use this blog to hold myself accountable, inspire others, and basically do it for me. So... your adventures are over? Oh, no. To live... to live would be an awfully big adventure. - Hook
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