It is no bad thing to celebrate a simple life.

This week I turned 33. For some reason this year, that milestone rather than the turning of the calendar, has put me in a somewhat reflective mood. This new year and new decade have felt a little faltering thus far, and yet, objectively, have gotten off to a very solid start. So here I am, picking up the rather long-neglected thread of my journeys with a somewhat belated reflection post.

Almost three years ago I went to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter to celebrate my 30th birthday. I had been struggling for a while and I was absolutely convinced that 30 would be a magical age, so it seemed only fitting to celebrate the occasion in a magical spot. I came home from that trip with a new wand, moved into a new space, quit a bad job, found a new one, and met Dylan. Magic indeed!

Now here we are at the end of the second month of a brand new decade, and Dylan and I have just returned from his first visit to Harry Potter world. We had a lovely time down in Florida, visited family, rode some rides, swam with manatees (!!! another bucket list item), and have returned home with three new wands and a droid. Our little Cambridge apartment is bursting with magic. Life is good. And yet, even when things are going well, it never hurts to have a little extra magic on hand, does it?

Looking back, 2019 was a wonderful ride. A good and full year that Dylan and I filled with some pretty marvelous adventures. We saw 9 live shows and three author readings, actually went out to see a movie in a theater 6 times, made it to one game at Fenway park, escaped 11 rooms, and played 346 hours of board games. We took 7 trips, including an amazing, bucket list checking, two weeks in New Zealand, and an excellent little jaunt to Bermuda to celebrate two years together and the achievement of my lifelong goal of getting certified to SCUBA dive. We started doing a weekly movie night at home, and I instituted and mostly stuck with a ‘one weekend day off EVERY week’ rule to make sure we had time to sit down at our table together face to face, share a meal or two, play those games, and just check in. I also read 39 books, beating my previous personal best of 36.

Amidst all of that, I started working with Tours By Locals, and realized, as the season got going, that in the past seven years I have inadvertently built myself a pretty solid base as a freelance tour guide in Boston. Despite all those trips and pesky weekend days off, I still managed to make 2019 my best year to date financially.

I started working out again in January 2019, and have just celebrated one year at the little training studio across the street that has quickly become one of my very happy places. Oddly, because of that studio and the TVs by the treadmills, I also started watching The Great British Baking Show, and thus became inspired to begin a deeper exploration of my lifelong interest in baking.  One of my big goals for this year is to find a better balance between the baking and a healthier, fitter me. Another of my big goals was to make myself a hobbit cake to celebrate my 33rd birthday. That first one is going to be an ongoing experiement, but after two cake-decorating classes and three days of work leading up to my birthday, I managed to achieve the cake! A great success, if I do say so myself.

That cake brings me back around again to the idea of magic and birthdays. Having taken a very deep dive back into The Lord of the Rings in preparation for our trip to New Zealand last year, I was reminded that 33 is the year hobbits come of age (thus the hobbit cake). I also happen to really like the number 3, and 33 has two threes in it (or 11 if you are multiplying- I also really like the number 11). Add all that to the fact that, thus far, my thirties really have been fantastically magical, just as I’d hoped, and you can probably see why I am finding myself excited for 33. I am also thrilled to look back at 23 and to see how far I’ve come.

The beginning of the last decade was a really hard year. A hard year that inspired some pretty big changes in my life. I moved to a new city in a new state, started a new career, made new friends, ran myself into another really hard year at 29, and managed to pull myself out of it in time to enjoy the first two years of my thirties. The last ten years have seen some major personal losses, some hard stumbles and failures, but also some wonderful achievements, milestones, and a lot of love. I have learned a lot about myself, including that I have the ability to change the direction of my life if I want to, and also that I don’t have to do everything alone. In fact, while I may be perfectly capable, it can be a whole lot more fun to share the ride.

I think I have also learned that things don’t have to be bad to justify wanting to change them. Or rather, I am trying to learn that. Life is certainly good right now, but I’m a human, and I think it is hardwired into us to always be looking at least a little bit ahead. I love my work, but I hate working nights, and I also don’t like the knowledge that I am inevitably going to suffer burnout in the middle of July and at the end of October every year like clockwork (and be slightly nervous about paying the bills in February). I love Boston and Cambridge, but I’m starting to feel just a little claustrophobic in the city. Dylan and I seem to keep picking vacation spots AWAY from noise and hustle (with the exception of the theme parks in Orlando) and are always just a little disappointed to come back to the city. The photo at the top of this post is a collection of images from our 2019 travels. Only two of those nine pictures were not taken from the porch of one of our AirBnBs. Can you figure out which two? What does it say about us that those are the places to which we gravitate? And while we love our apartment, it would be awfully nice for two introverts not to share walls with other people. We would love to have room for our bookshelves AND a giant game/ dining table to accommodate good friends, good fun, and good food. I would also love to wake up to the sounds of birds and not trucks and buses and jackhammers. And that’s all alright, right? To say, ‘I am incredibly lucky with things as they are, but I wonder what would happen if we tried this instead?’ Coming of age means taking the reins, right? At least partly? I know I’ve made a LOT of decisions in my 33 years, decisions that have led me to where I am now. And what a lovely here it is. But I also feel, at least a little, that I’ve left a lot to chance. I’ve been learning to set firmer boundaries since I turned thirty. Now that I’ve had a little practice, maybe coming of age means it is time to build a little platform in the space I’ve carved out for myself, stand up on it and say, ‘This is what I want for my life, no matter what any outside expectations might be, this is what I would like to try,” and then start actively making choices to move there.

So here it goes. I want to own a home. A house. With some space and green around it where Dylan and I can really put down some roots. I want to be able to work from that home. I’m not sure exactly what that looks like yet. It certainly doesn’t preclude working elsewhere sometimes, but I don’t want my income dependent on having to leave the house and interact with people face to face when I’m having a particularly anxious day, or I’m sick, or the weather is inclement. I want to conserve my energy for the things that are most important to me and mine. And I want to continue to travel. Our little blue planet is getting smaller, and more crowded, and it’s struggling with a lot of things, but in comparison to one or two little humans, it is still vast and varied and marvelous, and I want to explore as much of it as I can while I’m here. I want time to be still and enjoy sunrises and sunsets, to share undistracted moments with those few I hold most dear (both human and non), to read, to reflect, to follow my curiosity, to create, to dream.

So here’s to 2020: a new year, a new decade. Here’s to coming of age. To 33. To everything that brought me here, and to all that lies ahead. For, as Bilbo Baggins wrote on his (111th) and Frodo’s (33rd!) birthday, ‘Today of all days, it is brought home to me: it is no bad thing to celebrate a simple life.’