35 Goals for 35

Mid thirties makeover.

Happy birthday to meeeee (and my daughter), happy birthday to meeee (but more so my daughter), happy birthday dear meeee (jk it’s her day), happy birthday to just Coco.

If you haven’t followed me during previous birthdays (or didn’t catch on), my daughter was born on my birthday four years ago, so the day itself has been commandeered. And while that might bother some people I’m actually okay with it.

I put a lot of pressure on my birthday. Not pressure in the sense of I need gifts and a party and for everyone to wish me happy birthday without being prompted for the entire week (we all know those birthday people and how obnoxious they are), but I always feel the need to treat the day like my personal fiscal—I look back on the last year and think “why didn’t I do that?” or I look at the year ahead and think “am I now too old to do that?”

Very healthy, right?

I’d like to say this year is different but…it’s not. Not entirely anyway. I’m turning thirty-five. THIRTY. FIVE. I know anyone older than that is screaming at me to calm down, but I’m sure they also remember how jarring that age was! The second half of my thirties??? Insane. Halfway to seventy….I can’t even comprehend. My friends and I agreed last year that thirty-five fell under early thirties, not mid-thirties, and I’m carrying that philosophy into this year with me, but still…THIRTY-FIVE.

What is different is the fact that, this year, my birthday twin is much more aware of it being our day and the celebration of it. Her excitement, something I’ve clearly let fade away in my adult years, is contagious. Her countdown has set a new sort of anticipation for myself. The promise of what’s to come. She is a gift in itself every year, but this year she’s reminding me what a gift getting older is. And, while it might not take the pressure fully off, it does remind me to find the fun in the year ahead.

So that’s what I’m doing. Setting goals that challenge me to feel younger while getting older and remind me what a gift that is.

Happy birthday to me (but mostly Coco.)

35 Goals for 35

1. Stop giving all the fucks. Give some if you must, but not all! You’re spending too much time giving a fuck about too many little things and feeling burnt out by it. Stop it.

2. Invest in artwork. And hang it. Put a hole in the wall and hang it.

3. Make more phone calls. (I always say this about my best friend who lives in Dallas and I don’t stick too it and will be feeling it even more when I leave our other two best friends in Chicago, but texting is not the same as hearing someones voice.) Pick up the phone and call and if they don’t answer leave a voicemail or leave funny voice notes but just call them.

4. Try. Try new things, old things, the same things a different way. Just try to step out of your norm, especially when the expectation is that you’ll fail.

1. Wallpaper and/or paint some rooms in your new house. Unfortunately for Bill, you are pregnant so this is more of a supervising from afar bullet but it still stands.

2. Be sillier. You used to be sillier but now you’re far too serious and your kids think you’e the serious parent….screw that! Be the fun one!

3. Make it “a bit.” This plays off be sillier, but….make it a bit. Make it funny, lean into it, even if it’s deeply uncomfortable and you’re doing it to get through. Pull a Nora Ephron and “write it funny” and go from there.

4. Music. More music. And new music! Part of making it a bit, but your life should have a daily soundtrack and it doesn’t need to be your rambling thoughts so have a soundtrack or seven.

5. Work out more. Self explanatory.

6. Make the damn bed. Also self explanatory.

7. Capture more memories. AND MAKE SURE MOM IS IN THE MEMORY. (I watched the Martin Short documentary and he had so much home video footage of the most random things and also so many big things and I want more home video footage for my kids.)

8. Get a dog. Eventually. Not right away, but maybe by the end of this next fiscal….maybe.

9. Try botox. Or a tiny bit of lip filler. Or both!

10. Stop hoarding jeans. After this postpartum, you’re trying on every pair and that’s it—sell them, donate them, make a denim slip cover but GET RID OF THOSE JEANS.

11. Stop waiting around for “a sign.”

12. Go on walks in your new neighborhood. I’ll say weekly but it should probably be daily and you know that.

13. Get out of the house. Go on a date, go to the movies, go on a girls trip, go out to dinner with the girls, go out to dinner with your mom, allow your kids to go to a restaurant and learn how to be civilized in public. Go anywhere, just get out (but enjoy that mortgage.)

14. Go overboard with the Christmas decorations. You’ve got your house, you’ve got your yard, you’ve got the space….commit. Get excited to put it all up and be okay with all the work that goes into taking it all down. (Just don’t let Bill put up year long lights that he turns on for every holiday.)

15. Play. This probably could fall under “make it a bit”, but this is the more youthful side of things. A bit is for the night’s with girlfriends, the date night’s where you make up scenarios about other couples. This is for the kids. Play while they still want to play, color while they still want to color. Get dirty.

16. Build up your Snow Village Collection. If you’re going to go all out for Christmas, you must keep treating yourself to villages. And ornaments. One day those three kids are going to move out and and, even if this one is a boy, either him or his partner will be in awe of your collections and you’ll want it to be big enough everyone gets some when you die (and dramatically fights over it in lieu of missing you) so keep building your village!!

17. Make new friends. Obviously keep the old, but you’re going to have to put yourself out there.

18. Find a New Mexican restaurant/ weekly tradition. RIP Salty Iguana, but moving home makes me nostalgic for the years my extended family went to Salty Iguana weekly. I want to bring that back (if they let me…which they should.)

19. Plan your next Vegas vacation. The one with Bill and with your family.

20. Hide your phone. Get a brick, put it aside, delete that Crossword game (I’ve recently become too obsessed with beating strangers on Crossword)…just lose it for a while and don’t look for it.

21. Get more spray tans.

    

22. Read more. Write more. Read the crappy books, read the ones you don’t think you’ll like, reread your favorites. Write for no one but yourself. Write it really really bad and then walk away and never think of it again. Or do, but stop talking about it in therapy.

23. Get a new therapist. (Editor’s note: I adore my therapist but she can’t come with me to Kansas and I need to just accept I’ll probably need one in Kansas) You’re not going to be able to raw dog this like you think you are, better to just admit that now and get ahead of it.

24. Cook more. Bill does a lot of the cooking….a lot. And you like to cook! So find more than the same four dishes you’ve mastered and try them out.

25. Wear your jewelry. Get dressed (up.) You could wear the same outfit for five days and not even notice…. got to do something about that.

26. Make all the appointments and keep them. Specifically the dentist (don’t avoid that), but also…you’re going to have to find a new hair girl as hard as that will be and you MUST keep up with it.

27. Be nicer to yourself. So cringy, but also stop cringing. It’s not nice.

    

28. Make daily to-do lists. You’re going to fail at this more often than not, but just try.

29. Piggybacking off that…set new goals. And stick to them. This year you’ve made some lofty goals and stuck to them. But now those goals are gone and you’re struggling to commit to new ones. So commit!

30. Learn to contour. And curl your own hair. (Yes, you read that correctly.) Time to figure it out, but thirty five feels like the right time, doesn’t it?

31. Make room in the wine cellar. (This is an analogy my therapist and I came up with—essentially, I am holding onto bottles of wine and letting them collect dusts rather than enjoying them. I’m saving them for these “moments” that I’m not sure will ever come and, if they do, have I built up the bottle too much in my mind? Some are always worth saving, but some ideas/goals don’t mean what they did when I put them in my cellar. The vintage is bad, my tastes have changed, etc.) Let go of some of these bottles to make room for new bottles AND stop over crowding your wine cellar with bottles you’ll never get to.