Beyond 30: The Next Chapters

I've spent probably the last hour navigating between cooking dinner and checking over my list, trying to decide what it is that I wanted to talk about this week. And that's when it hit me: I don't want to talk about myself this week. While I understand the purpose of this project is to work on myself, accomplish some new goals, mark off a self-imposed bucket list so that when I die, whenever that fateful day is forty, fifty, one million years from now (who knows, maybe my work will allow me to live on forever?), I'll feel some measure of accomplishment, so that this last year of my twenties was not wasted on the folly of youth. But my life is not just mine. It doesn't just belong to me. It belongs to all of my friends and family and colleagues. This project belongs just as much to the people I love as it does to me. You've all celebrated, sympathized, understood my doubt and curbed my fears, and turned my sadness into joy. Every step of this year, though there

There are days when I think this blog is filled with nothing but the spurning and whining of what I wish my life could be; lamenting the loss of who I wish I was; hanging my head low at my lack of accomplishments. And then, as I am down trodden and worrisome and plagued by the cycle of self-doubt, I am surrounded and covered in abundant love. If I have not told you lately that I love you, let me say it again, loud and clear: I love you. Whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever part you play in my life, I love you. I've often said that love is not a finite resource, that we, as social creatures, have more love than we know what to do with. It seems to me a pity that for all that effort in loving our friends and family and furry companions, we seem to lack the diligence to use that love on ourselves. It goes without saying that I've not been very kind to myself as of late. Perhaps it is no secret that I was recently rejected, the burden of which I've been carryin