The big 3 - 0

Thirty years sounds so dang old. Today is my birthday, and I am in fact 30. I hate the idea of being thirty. I feel like everything about me screams "guy in his twenties", but I guess it's just time I break the mold of what we expect of people in their thirties. Or more than likely, it's time I break my own mental barrier of what I perceive people in their third decade to be like. I'm all for being responsible and a good human being and more wise, but I'm not all for being boring, normal, or into NCIS (or related shows).

So, thirty years old. It doesn't feel like I've been alive for all that long, which is just frightening evidence that one day soon I'm going to wake up and be sixty and wonder how the heck I became an old man so fast. I feel good about who I am these days. I feel like a good person in general, a good uncle/son/brother/friend/employee/business owner/writer/citizen of the earth. But I feel like I've always been pretty good at those things, and maybe the thirties is when I should focus on kicking it up a notch, going from good to great. I need to do better with my relationship with God, that is something I'll immediately identify as a deficiency in my life. And I need to lose weight and make that something I commit to fully and just do. But beyond those things, I'm pretty awesome. I know, I know, sounds like something someone in their twenties would say, right?

So that's it. For my birthday I teamed up with close friends and family to buy myself an iPad2, and I'm thrilled about the purchase. It's awesome and super powerful and all that jive, and I feel like I'll be using it three or four years from now. I also now have a new (used) car. It's my first ever car payment. Having a car payment is something that people in their thirties are all about.

As far as the past year, I have zero regrets really. It was by far the most productive year of my life, and from 6/15/10 to 6/15/11 I've written not one or two, but three novel length projects. I've also written a bucketful of short stories, just another thing that has caused my creative output to surge far beyond past levels. Creatively it's the life I always dreamed of living, and Hall Brothers Entertainment has made it a reality. Few people have the honor of saying they are living off of money made doing what they love most in life, but I get paid to write, and spend my days and nights writing fiction and journalism, and people read it and most enjoy it (some cuss me out over it, when the news doesn't fall their way, but that's okay).

I deeply love my family, and I love my life. Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, I still believe that there is goodness in this world, that people can be gentle and kind and thoughtful and funny and wonderful, and that the world is a place full of wonder and hope and amazing things and people just waiting to be discovered. I believe that there is joy to be found in every day, that happiness is possible for each and every one of us. 98 out of every 100 days are good days for me, full of laughter and optimism and creativity and passion and love, and I see no reason why turning thirty will change that whatsoever. I kind of wish I was still 28, or 29 even, but oh well, I guess I'll just have to accept being thirty, at least until I finish work on this time machine...