No excuses, I just didn’t have the capacity to update this blog over the past year as much as I thought I would have. /shrugs

Last night, I realized that I would be turning 30 in 3 months. Time is such a crazy concept. It feels just like yesterday when I was 20. Bright eyed and fresh out of uni with great expectations, deeply in love with the guy I was planning to marry within the next decade, and overall, quite excited for the future.

I’m 29 now. While my career is on track and has gotten to a point where I find work gains satisfying, I am constantly exhausted. While I’ll always be fond of that guy, we’re both in each other’s past now. The kid I was planning on having before 30 is going to have to wait until their mom finds a potential baby daddy lol.

Don’t get me wrong. My life is great. First of all, I’m healthy and I’m fully vaccinated. And I’m in a place where I never thought I would ever be. I have an adorable senior dog and a mischievous little kitten. The small brand I built from the ground up is actually gaining some traction. I am finally financially stable (this took a while because I had zero financial assistance from my parents once I started working and I didn’t know how to handle my own money). My closest friends and family make up for the lack of a partner – the amount of flowers and gifts I have gotten in the 2 years I’ve been single is way more than I’ve ever gotten from my ex in the 10+ years we’ve been together. I am where I am now due to sheer resilience (and the great starting point my parents put me in).

But because I’m nearing 30, I feel like I should have more to show for the past decade. My own home is yet to be built and paying mortgage by myself is harder than I thought it would be (new dating app bio: tell me you actually have plans for the future by letting me know if ready ka na ba maki-half sa mortgage ko hahaha). I still haven’t gotten 11-line abs (special thanks to all the pandemic home bakers). I finally booked that business class tickets to Europe last year for what was supposed to be an amazing month of solo travel that eventually got cancelled (+ getting refunds for everything was a whole other level of stress). I feel like I also should throw in a fling or two to make my single life “complete”, but I didn’t plan on engaging in anything romantic until I healed from my breakup. And while I would casually talk to guys, I have never met anyone where I felt like I was ready to risk it all again. So here we are.

There’s this overwhelming feeling of not knowing if I’m not doing enough or if I’m doing too much. I have always believed that I am far from ambitious. But maybe I am. I can’t gauge if I’m aiming too high or purposely aiming low to soften the blow when I can only work my way up to a subpar level. I’ve been trying to do so many things and absorb all the knowledge that I can while my mind is still swift enough to grasp it. And yet I say I want to live life to the fullest by immersing myself into every moment in order not to miss it. I say I’m content, but I also want everything that life has to offer.

And while I know deep down in my heart how much I’ve progressed, it’s also extremely hard to look beyond where I feel stuck right now. I guess it’s the pandemic brain talking. Or maybe it’s aging blues. But the only thing I’m certain of right now is that we only have a few decades to live. And I feel like I’m running out of them.