Issue #50: Reflecting on my early thirties, so far

32 lessons I've learnt, on friendship, love, socks, and that nebulous thing we call success.

I turned 32 this Tuesday, which is something of an inconsequential age. There are no songs dedicated to it, unless you sing loudly and incorrectly over the chorus of Taylor Swift’s 22. At least its successor, 33, is famous for being the age Jesus died (a fact I shall forever retain from Jacqueline Wilson’s The Illustrated Mum).

And yet it does feel like I’ve finally received my full-price, Adult ticket into my fourth decade. Two years ago, I was still trying on 30, as if it were a boxy, twill jacket in the Cos changing room; sizing myself up in the mirror, seeing if it suited me. At this stage, I’m confident it does. I feel a new kind of conviction in what I do: a sense that this isn’t necessarily life’s dress rehearsal anymore, that the decisions I make now will perhaps contribute to the finished product of who I am. And, in fact, that’s not so crazy: as this article I previously cited from The Cut suggests, your personality doesn’t change all that much after 35.

Let’s rewind back to me, aged 30. Professionally, it was a good time: my debut book had come out earlier that year. My podcast was entering its fourth season. I was finally being approached for freelance journalism commissions, rather than endlessly pitching into the abyss. Personal life wise, however, it was a work in progress. I was still recovering and recalibrating from the loneliness hangover of living alone during lockdown. I wasn’t reading much fiction, nor had I really found new hobbies after my existing ones (i.e. first-person writing, podcasting) became part of my career. I had a very tall boyfriend with whom I had almost nothing in common. I was ‘looking after my body’, sure – but often to a degree of strictness that precluded me from having much fun. But I did spend my 30th in a room full of a few dozen people I love, thinking, I’m proud of these relationships, I want to deepen what’s here.

Celebrating my birthday earlier this week, I experienced that feeling much more broadly – about wanting to perpetuate, and make more of, what’s already in my life. It’s not ‘the best is yet to come’; more like, ‘the best is here, and I want to keep cherishing it’. The people I’m close to. The career I love. The hobbies and practices I’ve developed over the past couple of years (the cool thing about yoga, for instance, is you’ve a much greater chance of carrying it on into your 80s than say, paragliding). If someone were to take a snapshot right now and be like, this is your life, work with what’s there – then, in the majority of areas, I’d be pretty content. Less striving, more savouring.

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Something I often think about is Solomon’s Paradox: the notion that you give better advice to other people than you do yourself. Which makes sense, because isn’t that the point of advice: that it comes from someone else; a trusted source, with a greater degree of objectivity? Interestingly, it speaks to a long-held quirk of my journal-writing style, where I’ll begin with ‘I’ statements, drifting later on into the second-person ‘You’. More recently, I’ve realised this is something of a self-soothing technique – distancing myself from myself, and responding like a best friend. It doesn’t seem like much, but it’s been helpful over the year.

And yet, often the distance required for such wisdom isn’t objectivity; it’s time. And, in that vein, I’ve been reflecting on what I’d tell 30-year-old me, the one who still (occasionally) got ID-ed. I’ve been considering what I’d write in a ‘letter to my younger self’, like you see in the Big Issue – putting aside the logistical difficulty of time travel for a moment. And so, I’ll take a stab at it.

A disclaimer, first, for anyone who might interpret any of the below as in any way instructive. Advice is, as Baz Lurhmann puts it, ‘a form of nostalgia’, while giving it out is ‘a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts, and recycling it for more than it's worth.’ With that in mind, do take the below with a generous pinch of Maldon sea salt.

32 life lessons, at 32

1. No close relationship is worth losing yourself. That’s as true for platonic relationships as it is romantic ones. If you perpetually feel like you can’t be yourself around someone, that’s a problem.

2. It’s cool to get excited over little things – and not just because it’s technically gratitude or mindfulness. The six-year-old girl drawing lilac chalk circles around a tree in Belsize Village square last weekend has more of an instinctive insight on how to enjoy life than many self-help authors do.

3. There’s a time and a place for discussing religion and politics. The dinner table isn’t one of them – it’s not ignorant to hate wine-fuelled ‘debates’ where no one’s listening to each other.

4. Having no set goal is the joy of hobbies. So much in life has to be measured, paced, made finite. But your conversational Spanish learning might go on forever – and that’s a positive thing, rather than a failure.

5. Everyone will surprise you if you listen to them a little better. You’ll forget that at least once a day, and be humbled every time you’re reminded.