On the final countdown...

I don't have much time to write. It's a few minutes before 7 and if I have any hope of getting Starbucks before I spend my day at campus move in for freshmen, I must jet. I'm cursing myself for forgetting to set my coffee maker last night. Gee, I wonder why I did. Oh yeah, because it's a Saturday and I shouldn't be working. Right.

It's also the day before I turn 30. Thus I've named this blog the final countdown. Not because I really feel like this is the end, but it's a chapter I haven't been too anxious to close. But for what reason?

Let's face it. There's nothing all that great about the 20s, other than the metabolism you have through the first quarter of it. And really, all that truly sucks about the 30s is the metabolism you have going into it, made worse only by the metabolism you have coming out of it.

I guess I'm just grasping with the fact that I'm not really young anymore. There are only so many more times I'll be confused for a student, and only so many times that I'll hear "Don't worry about it, you're still young!" when I talk about goals for the future that I've yet to attain. And really, I don't have all my ducks in a row in all respects of my life, particularly the financial one, and being in my 20s was a great excuse for that. I always look to 30 with an eye toward, "By then, I'll have myself in better shape." Zoinks!

I think what I'm really going to miss is just the excuse of it. So far I've been kind of a wunder kid on the job. That won't be so remarkable now. I guess it's really the removal of a factor that's made me a big fish in a small pond that weighs a bit heavy on my mind.

And I don't care so much about looking young. In fact, people who look young instantly lose a little bit of credibility upon first glance. What I care about is looking healthy, and I think that will be the theme for my 30s. Being and looking healthy. I haven't been so good to myself in that regard as of late.

But I figured it was worth writing, before I jet off to campus, just to put down in words that there is something poetic about today and what I'm doing. As I countdown to thirty, I'll be moving in about 400 18 year old women entering college for the first time. Hopefully that bond of common transition, of closing one chapter to open another, might spark some aura of bonding that erases my newness at school and gives me some credibility and connection for the girls and their families. It's what I'm really hoping for.

And, let's face it. It's credibility I can really only have by being a grown up.