Thirty.

Yesterday I turned thirty.

Three. Zero.

Thirty has been feeling heavy to me, and I've been struggling to put my finger on just what it is, but I think I'm getting closer to figuring it out. Yesterday Dave and I had a good chat about all of the crappy stuff that happened in our twenties, and how we should be happy to move forward and leave everything behind. It made me feel a whole lot better, in the moment. Turning over a new decade feels, in many ways, like a fresh start.

But mixed in with all the hard, stressful moments, my twenties were filled with so many big awesome things, and I can't help but feel a little sad that they are done. I studied abroad in Ireland. I graduated from college. I got an amazing first job. I got married. We moved to Seattle, and both found incredible jobs out here. We bought a house. We had our first baby. I left my job and finally started my own business, for real this time (though I'm still figuring things out).

So many big things.  Wham bam. Done. And now there's this little voice inside that says, "Look at you. You've done it all. There's nothing left." Which I know is not true. And I feel silly saying it, but I'm struggling to figure out what to look forward to next. I'm a planner. I like to know. Of course, watching my son grow and enjoying my family are the unspoken Things That I Look Forward To the Most. But my goals feel very different, and more about slow measured growth than about huge life changes. That's something new to wrap my head around.

I think a lot of my anxiety has to do with the unknown. I had a pretty good idea that all of those milestones from my twenties would happen, at some point, in the span of a decade. I kind of knew what to expect. But now I have absolutely no idea what to expect, and thirty and beyond feels like this great big blank slate and it scares me. I'm scared to watch my mom and my in-laws grow older. I'm scared of what it will be like for my son to go to school. I'm scared that my business will fail, miserably. All reasonable things to have fears about, and it will pass. It always does.

So that's where all the heavy comes from. That, and late fall in the pacific northwest is gray and thick and heavy, too. Fitting for a birthday I'm not too terribly excited about.

But a birthday I was really super excited about? A certain little dude turned one a couple of weeks ago. Oh my stars.

Nothing heavy about this kid. He's sunshine (most of the time) and firecrackers (all of the time) and he walks and runs and babbles and when he laughs it sounds like a fountain, or a tree full of birds.

And right now, that is enough.