Early in March I celebrated my 30th birthday by renting out a champagne bar for me and all of my friends, which was one of the most enjoyable nights of my life followed by one of the most painful days. I have never experienced a hangover that bad and hope to never again; it’s definitely something I’ll be leaving in my previous decade (I hope).
As part of my celebration I got myself a birthday cake from this adorable bakery that featured baby shower and wedding cakes that were cute and elegant. So imagine their surprise when I requested an all-black birthday cake with “Death to My 20’s” written over the top. It was definitely a unique ask, and they sort of only begrudgingly gave it to me:
Ok, my sense of humor certainly isn’t for everyone but I thought it was a good idea for a 30th birthday cake, and even if the little old cake-baking ladies weren’t thrilled to make it for me it still tasted delicious. And it made me think about the decade I’m leaving and the new one I’m entering in a different way. For whatever reason, maybe the same reason I love New Year’s Resolutions or the start of a new quarter, this birthday feels like a meaningful time to bring in new opportunities and let go of stale ideas. As I say in my yoga classes “breathe in what you’ve been waiting for and breathe out what no longer serves you.”
For those of you who are less woo-woo than I am, consider the idea of a post-mortem: in medicine, this is the practice of examining people after they die to determine the cause of death. It’s a term that’s been co-opted by the business world to evaluate the success or failure of a project’s ability to meet its outlined goals after completion. Team members review what worked well and what didn’t, gather feedback, and use the exercise as a reflection period to develop lessons learned before moving on to the next project.
This blog post is, more or less, a post-mortem for my 20’s.
TIMELINE
First, it seems fitting to take a look back at each year of my 20’s broadly to give a senes of where I’ve been. This was actually a pretty entertaining exercise that involved looking back at a lot of old Instagram posts to jog my own memory. Some of those memories were embarrassing and painful, some were funny or filled me with nostalgia. Overall, I’m pretty proud of this little shit show of a life that I’ve cobbled together for myself, without really knowing any better.
- 2013 (20 years old): A carefree (said with all the irony in the world as I have always been an intense worrier, but in retrospect, had relatively little to actually worry about) and naive college sophomore at Elon University, still figuring out the world and who I wanted to be within it. A summer internship with Teach for America brought me one of my closest friends (shoutout Hannah, a diligent reader of the blog!) and solidified so many of the amorphous ideas I had about my future. I wanted to be a good person, who did things that made the world a better place. And also, I wanted to be the best at it.
- 2014 (21 years old): *trigger warning* This is something I’ve not shared widely, and may feel like too much for some readers so feel free to skip this section. I was sexually assaulted on my twenty-first birthday, which sent me into an emotional tailspin that continued through the rest of my undergraduate experience. I wasn’t a good friend or family member, I wasn’t kind to myself, and it really poisoned my ability to be in romantic relationships. I didn’t say it then, but I’m so grateful for the people who helped me through that time in my life, whether they understood the full extent of what I was going through or not.
- 2015 (22 years old): I graduated from college and moved to Oklahoma as a Teach for America corps member. Talk about a fresh start: it was like I was a new person. I left behind a lot of baggage in North Carolina, including a lot of limiting beliefs about myself. I started teaching fourth grade math to the most amazing and frustrating group of ten year olds I have ever known, I completed my 200-hour yoga teacher training, and I adopted a dog/alien named Earl, but who I called Rowdy.
- 2016 (23 years old): I think this was the year where I threw myself a surprise party and the guy I was dating at the time tried to take credit for it, so that’s a pretty good representation of what my life was like at that time. I started Crossfit, and I also won a Golden Apple award for teaching after being nominated by one of my students.
- 2017 (24 years old): After finishing my second year of teaching, completing my commitment to Teach for America, I started a Master’s program and decided to change careers. I got a new job with a family foundation running a non-profit program and started learning how to navigate a career where I wasn’t constantly covered in hot glue and had to talk to people my age and older, instead of much much younger.
- 2018 (25 years old): Wow, I remember feeling so old on this birthday. I remember feeling so cocky, so sure of myself. I was killing it at everything: my job, my relationships, my fitness, and it was being recognized. I received a ton of attention, to the point where everywhere I went in Tulsa, it felt like I knew someone. It was nice, but it also felt stifling. I thought I’d “made it” there and needed to move on to the next big thing. At the end of the year I packed up all of my stuff, quit my job, and moved. I also met a man at a Christmas party, and as I kissed him goodbye I had this hollow feeling in my stomach, like he was the one thing I really didn’t want to leave behind.
- 2019 (26 years old): After a few months in North Carolina hanging with my family (turns out, my mom and dad are actually really cool, something pre-26-year-old me didn’t realize) and teaching A LOT of yoga, I got a job in San Francisco and moved to California. Oh and that man I mentioned? He became my long-distance boyfriend, and every month came to visit me so we could gallivant around a new city together. I LOVED CALIFORNIA. I never have, and probably never will, love another city as much. But I got that itch again almost as soon as I arrived. I felt like I was crushing it, at my job, with my new friends, at my new gym. And then…I met another man! No, not in a romantic way. This man ran a venture capital firm, and after a few conversations he asked me to come run it with him. Again I packed my bags and moved to Washington DC.
- 2020 (27 years old): I moved to DC in February and by March I was sheltering in place to bend the curve of COVID-19. I was completely alone, with no friends or family in the area, desperately attempting to be a good at a job I knew nothing about. I couldn’t go to the gym, or go to museums, or do any of the things I had been looking forward to. And my new job? I was terrible. Straight up, probably the worst new hire in history. Every day I woke up and thought “if my boss tells me I’m fired today, I will have no hard feelings. In fact, he probably should.” The only saving grace was Bobby, the man from Oklahoma who became my boyfriend in San Francisco and then quit his job and uprooted his own life to come live with me in DC. Everything about isolating during 2020 stunk, but the extra time with him? It wasn’t so bad.
- 2021 (28 years old): In fact, it was so the opposite of bad that Bobby and I got engaged in March, and then married in August. In DC you can self-officiate your wedding, so it was just the two of us, the smallest little elopement ever. We also finally got to have Bobby’s son Enzo come and stay with us in DC for the summer. Being a bonus mom didn’t come naturally to me, but I had a lot of support from my own mom, my friends, and of course from Bobby.
- 2022 (29 years old): As DC began to open back up after COVID, I slowly was able to find my place in the city. I finally gained confidence in my job, going from an Operations Associate to the COO. I made new friends, friends that I didn’t feel like I needed to be fake around, or needed to impress. Bobby and I threw ourselves a one-year anniversary party in Tulsa and being back there I could see how much my life had changed. Some of my friends were married, others had their first kids. Some people I thought for sure would be at my wedding weren’t even invited, but other new friends showed up all the way from DC for us. I still worry a lot. I still have some really hard days where everything feels wrong. But most of the time, when I look at my life, I’m happy.
This exploration has become more of an undertaking than I initially realized, and I really want to give it the time it deserves, so I’ll end Part I here. Part II will include some of my successes, failures, feedback from people in my life, and lessons learned.
You’re an amazing woman, Casey!