On Turning 30

Ficarazzi, Sicily

Yes, really, I turned 30. Just as we all do, if we are privileged to do so. Because really, nothing is guaranteed, not even tomorrow.

30 is seen as a milestone birthday, ostensibly more for women than for anyone else. And while I feel great sentimentality towards milestones, I wanted to take my time with 30 - to process what it meant to me on my own terms, not on societies’, or on others’ opinions.

First, I will reflect that turning 30 is a gift is so many ways. For still being blessed to be on this earth, to be healthy, and having strong networks of family and friends surrounding me with love. I am blessed to choose where I get to live, and to be able to pursue my professional and creative passions. I have so many treasured memories of my 20s - traveling the world, from big cities to small towns, exploring world wonders, and encountering new friends along the way. My 20s felt like mostly that - wandering, searching for a place where I could make a home. A place where I could build a refuge, a community, a place from which I could take off to go explore knowing I would have a place to come “home” to at the end. I found that place in Palermo, where soon after moving in to my first apartment, I went into lockdown with the rest of the country and soon the world. This experience forced me to really sit still and be alone with myself, and to reflect on what I wanted from my time here on this earth. Three years later, I am still here, and after taking time, both enforced by force majeure and by myself: to study, to rest, to live and to lay the foundations for the next chapter of my life, I am ready to begin.

I hate to give in to cliché, but turning 30 has shifted something in me, although I think it has been a gradual progression, silently moving below the surface for some time. While I will not lament about “being old” or for the few greys I find in my hair, there is truth that, not that there is no more time, but that one begins to feel there is less time to waste. In my 20s, going off to live in the Thai countryside for a year was not a huge consideration. Flying to Morocco on a one-way ticket was full of possibilities that could last for a few weeks or a few months. I felt like I could take risks pretty easily. Since I was only in my 20s, I still had time. Time to find my “real life.” Time to find what I was “really going to do.” But that was my real life, and that was really what I was doing.

All of those experiences formed me into who I am today. I would not be where I am now if I had not gotten on those planes, if I had not sat in hostels in front of a guidebook, wondering where to go tomorrow. I would not have been able to create a YouTube channel about moving to Italy if I had not done so. I would not have been able to write poetry if I hadn’t fallen in love, and had my heart broken. All of those nights, sitting around tables with people who used to be strangers opened my heart and mind to the beauty of all of it - the highs and the lows. I am so grateful I had that time and those opportunities to really go for it. It wasn’t always a carefree, breezy dream - there were many difficulties, tears, and challenges that I had to face. But somehow I think all of those struggles, and I can say this because I am in a place where I can appreciate them, truly make me grateful for the place I am in now. I am so blown away by my blessings, and hold them deep in my heart, super thankful for how far I’ve come, and what I was able to see and do, and the people I met along the way.

So how has turning 30 changed me? It hasn’t, but it is me who in the last ten years has evolved, grown, and matured. I feel a greater appreciation for life, for how beautiful and how fragile it can be. This has lead me to a greater thankfulness and appreciation when I go to bed at night for each day that has just passed. In the way that my heart has always yearned to travel and see the world, in the past few years that has been balanced by a desire to plant my roots as well, to build a home and a community and a family. This past year especially has instilled in me a focus and drive to expand my professional reach, to double-down on my creative pursuits so that they may be a virtuous circle sustaining my life while my life sustains my creative work, continuing the path I both inadvertently and intentionally began for myself when I began writing this online journal almost five years ago.

There has always only been so much time. We never know how much of it we have left. Turning 30 has been not an alarm, but instead a soft reminder, wind chimes in the back of my mind, that there is no more time to waste. If I want to do something, best to start looking for a way to do it. Best to just get going. Not to be in a hurry, not to rush. But not to put off the important things until tomorrow. Not to wait until things are “perfect.” And not to waste time on the things that don’t matter. Because there are things I am here to do, places I want to see and words I want to write. People I want to love and life I want to create. I can’t wait to see what this next year brings, inshallah. Thank you for being on this journey with me.

love,

greer