How do I go about getting one of those free bus passes? Will I start waking up for a surprise wee in the night and then feel obliged to get up and put the kettle on? Should I start driving at 10 miles an hour below the speed limit? Is it now acceptable for me to shout at children & have it put down to my age rather than the fact I just don’t like other people’s children? Are my balls now going to get extra saggy and hairy? Will I just forget to put trousers on as I leave the house thus showing off my new saggier and hairier balls to the general public?
These are all questions I had to ask myself this year as I turned 30.
I know that a lot of the audience of this post that have already reached this milestone will now be saying “OMG 30 isn’t even that old/life begins at 40/I can’t believe I forgot to put my trousers on when I left this morning”. In the scheme of things I suppose it isn’t that old, at least I am not 40 *shudders* but what I can say is that I am more comfortable with myself now than I ever have been. I am in the best shape of my life (not hard considering what a fatty I was), accepting of who I am and I am fully conscious of my weaknesses of which there is only one (cheese).
For me getting to 30 was a strange aging process; I was the youngest out of everyone I knew to have children, get married, buy a house, have a dad bod & really settle down. All by the time I was 26 (at which point I looked 38). I remember listening to Classical FM on the way home from work each day for a good 3 months & was almost just waiting for retirement. Fortunately, when I started my new job I found a fresh lease of life & that acceptance of old age was short lived, I put back on the Ibiza Summer Anthems playlist, lost 5 stone & found a new positive outlook. In hindsight, I am lucky to have all of the things that made me grow up so quickly & I am even luckier that I realised that there are still plenty of years left before I became my Dad at the age of 27.
So have I achieved everything I wanted to by this age? I could always be earning more money/have a higher level job but in fact the way that I have maintained my work/life balance through the busiest years of my life mean that I see this as a success. Outside of work, I would say that I have everything I could have hoped for by the age of 30, a beautiful & brilliant wife (you may know her), 2 amazing children & my own power drill.
And finally what have I learned? As part of getting older I now know not to waste my time with people who don’t bother with me. I am happy to be disagreed with but not to be spoken down to. I know not to spend time doing things that I don’t want to do (unless Charlotte tells me to). I have learned that mustard does have its place within a boy’s bedroom, that some things are purely for decoration & most importantly to never, ever disagree with Mrs THTMM (even if she is wrong) (which she never is). After all……happy wife, happy life.
Mr THTMM x