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1. It's not the Hunger Games, it's an age. A number. A nice round one with a zero at the end of it and, sure, a finality to it — the end of something, that something being your 20s — but it's also the beginning of a new decade of your life. A decade in which you purchase your first custom-made drapes and own a suitcase with zippers that all actually work and stuff.
2. You will stop caring about your weight. So wherever you are now age-wise, so long as you're healthy, just stop caring about it. Your thoughts are better spent on other things, like what you're doing after work. Eat what you want, stop when you're full, work out because it makes you feel good and because you want to live another 30 years, and then another 30 years after that. Your weight doesn't matter. How you react to it does.
3. You will have an epic 30th birthday party. Your friends will travel to a beach house for a whole weekend for your 30th. Or they'll start drinking with you at 5 and stay out with you until you're so drunk that you're actually paying for PBR. This will probably never happen again because although you will have a blast, you will realize there's a reason you left this kind of partying in the recent past known as your 20s. Hangovers not only feel like shit, they actually kind of make your whole face sag! Don't worry though, the 22-year-old in your office will tell you she doesn't notice one bit, and you will believe her!
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4. You will start to value different things. Clubbing, for instance, will make you want to die in a hole. Having some "fuck you" money in savings account, on the other hand, will have you be like:
5. That feeling you have around kids where you don't know how to talk to them or what to do with them or even begin to understand why people voluntarily choose to give birth to them? That all goes away. Your siblings and friends will have kids, and you'll start to understand that you just treat them like people who aren't kids, minus saying "fuck." Also you can pick them up because they're tiny, which is fun! Who knows, you might even realize your own maternal instincts can apply to something other than a drunk roommate vomiting into a toilet.
6. You will internalize the welcome reality that people think about themselves more than they think about you. How often do you notice things other people feel insecure about? And actually consider those things? Thought so.
7. You will accomplish things if you work hard. This is one of those cliché things your mom has told you a million times. Your mom is right. You can't leave your college graduation and become the CEO of Pringles the next day. But if you keep your head down, work hard, aim to please, and retain a healthy amount of fear that you're not doing as well or as much as you could be doing, you will go very far in your career.
8. Being boring can actually be a good thing! Being "boring" means you stay home and read books and actually taste your alcoholic beverages when you drink them. Being "boring" means you date a guy with a steady job who calls his mom once a week and brings you flowers for no reason. Being "boring" means you have this thing called your 30s on lock and are not destined to be a perennial girl-woman who wears day-old jeans with yesterday's underwear stuck to the inside of your right pant leg and dates guys who ask you every Sunday night if you are "working tomorrow" because they don't care enough about you to remember that you have a 9-to-5 and have never been consistently employed themselves.
9. Your ass will not sag to the floor. You're 30. It's not a death sentence for your ass. On your 30th birthday, your butt doesn't all of a sudden turn into a rapidly deflating Goodyear blimp. This isn't the end of the grand ball that life is, and your Uber home won't turn into a pumpkin either.
10. You won't actually have everything all figured out by the time you turn 30. You'll have some things figured out. But you'll still call your mom when things go wrong, and you'll still have to read the fine print twice or even thrice when picking out a health insurance plan. And that's OK. If you had everything figured out by your fourth decade of life, you'd be so bored for the rest of it. And if there's one thing your 30s isn't, it's boring.
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Amy Odell is the former editor of Cosmopolitan.com. Chief amongst her interests are cats and Beyonce. She is a feminist (thank you for asking) and ex-fashion journalist. She is the author of the hilarious book of essays, Tales from the Back Row: An Outsider’s View From Inside the Fashion Industry.
