30 – 1
Some thoughts on turning 29
I write this from a coffee shop on my 29th birthday as I eat my free birthday pastry, and it feels like as good a time as any to get a bit reflective seeing as this is the 29th anniversary of journeys around the sun. Much like how people often say they’re turning 29 for the 7th time, I feel like this birthday for me is my 30th minus 1 birthday.
Okay so let’s start by addressing how weird time is, especially after the pandemic when we all spent ~2 years with our lives on hold. Funnily enough I managed to avoid getting covid for the first 2 years, and have since gotten it twice in the last year.
Despite that though the last year has been a big one for me both professionally and personally. I got promoted at work and somehow find myself managing a team of over 30 people. And this was my first full year of living in Chicago with my girlfriend. It took multiple years of hard work and immigration issues, but it feels like I finally got my life back on track this year post covid.
So if I’m back on track, then where is this track going?
Well, I think it stays in America for at least a decent while longer. There are many things wrong with this country which I regularly talk about on this blog but there’s also a lot of things right with this country. At the end of the day it is one of the best places in the world to live and work. I don’t know if I’ll ever pursue citizenship but I am actively working on getting a green card to secure my ability to stay in this country long term.
So then which city? Well, I fucking love Chicago. I’ve been here for one winter and one summer and I think when you net them out it’s still massively positive. I’ll put up with spending a couple of months indoors in Jan/Feb for the absolutely spectacular place this city becomes for the 6 months of summer. Sure I’ve flirted with the idea of going out west or down south where the weather is better, but I don’t think there’s another city which matches what I’m looking for in terms of affordability and public transit.
And then career wise I honestly have no idea. I’ve obviously been given a lot of opportunity at my company, but I’d be lying if I said I thought I’d do it for my entire career. I’m the guy who wrote a few thousands words on this very blog when I was considering which career to go into. Consulting is awesome, but part of me wants to be closer to the actual product at some point in my career. I doubt that will be any time soon, but it’s something I’m actively thinking of, especially as I find myself 12 months away from the dreaded 30 years old.
It’s a common trope that everyone freaks out when they turn 30 and has an existential crisis, so it’s interesting to sit here and think about what the things I might be freaking out about are when I turn 30, especially as I have a year to course correct anything.
Some of the big hitters are the family stuff, people seem obsessed with being married and having kids by the time they hit 30, and I’ve never really prioritized that stuff. Sure, one day – but I’ve always maintained that I want to live my own life first and get to financial security before I think about all of that. And that ties into another one: lots of people want to own a house by the time they turn 30, and obviously when I moved countries I accepted that I’d be behind some of my peers on that metric, getting a mortgage usually necessitates being in the same place for a while.
And as I say, I’m more worried about making sure I’ll be financially secure in the future, regardless of whether that means I’m renting or I own the four walls I live in. Maybe this will change in the coming months and years but I’ve always felt quite European when it comes to how ownership – I see people I went to school with getting their keys to their first home on Instagram and it doesn’t really phase me. Good for them of course, but I just prioritized different things. I’ll get there in the end, but it’s not something I ever felt like I needed to do before I turned 30.
So I guess this is a long winded way of saying that I’m happy where I’m at, and happy where I’m going. It’ll be interesting to read this back in a year when I’m mid-freak out and see how much my thinking has changed.
Posted on 19th December 2022, Written on 7th November 2022
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