Wow. What? I’m? Hold on. I can’t? I need wine.*
Today is my 30th birthday. I repeat: 30th. Fifteen times two. Three decades of life. Nine years of drinking. The assumed age range of most Disney Channel parents. Three nine lives and some change. A full-grown, literal adult.
I am feeling things. Some of them are nice: I am grateful for what I have, what I have done, even if my Type A brain will never think it is “enough.” Some of them are not nice: see previous comment, also I am still living in the state I’ve wanted to leave since I was 13, also did I mention I cannot escape the feeling of “have I done enough.” Some of them are I think just being 30: my neck hurts and I squint a lot and am contemplating coloring my hair for the first time because the grays are coming faster than your girl can pluck. (I know you’re not supposed to pluck, okay, I have 30 years of life knowledge.)
On top of society putting a stupid amount of pressure on people (especially women) to “accomplish things” by 30, this is a pandemic birthday. It’s not the 30th birthday I imagined, somewhere, oh, I don’t know, surrounded by literal miles of wine. COVID-19 came for my wedding and then it came for my 30th birthday and I am working on not being an enormous brat about it.
For a hot second, in early Fall, it seemed like things might turn around. Sure, I wasn’t going to book a trip to Napa Valley like a silly fantasy I had dreamed of for like 9 years, but maybe 8 of my nearest and dearest could come to Columbus for the weekend and we could wear sparkly tops or velvet dresses and drink pink champagne out of a 10-coupe set from Crate & Barrel and snack on a shit ton of Holly food (charcuterie boards). Maybe.
But even my best friends were rightfully hesitant to throw a HOLLYday party in the middle of a global pandemic, and what was 8 of my friends turned into 2 sisters or a nice dinner somewhere and then fuck it, I guess we’re making Jell-O shots at home.
It’s whatever. I’ll have more birthdays. With any goddamn luck, I will get a postponed bachelorette party and postponed 30th birthday and postponed wedding and postponed honeymoon in 2021.**
I’m admittedly writing this during one of my more downer moments. Work has been the worst lately, Ryan and I just decided we shouldn’t travel for Christmas, the green velvet office chair I’ve been eying for 9 months STILL isn’t on sale at World Market. Maybe I will come back and edit this part out when I am feeling better about being old. Maybe feeling better about aging is something that is supposed to happen as you … age. There is also a good chance I will perk up when the $70 bottle of rose champagne gets delivered.
When I turned 22, I wrote a blog post about 1. feeling 22 (I know) and 2. 22 things I had learned. When you are 30, life is way more mentally and emotionally exhausting, so I didn’t feel I could fully commit to a list of 30 witticisms or wisdoms, but—here is a not-quite list of a few things I feel like I have learned (?) as a very fresh thirty-something!
ON DRINKING
Dear 21 (and 22.. and 23) year old me—GIRL. I know the Barefoot Moscato tastes delish now and you feel like a badass bitch carrying those little bottles around instead of giving into the peer pressure of wannabe SNL cast members offering you PBR at house parties, but, listen—there is a world of wine out there.
Amazing, delicious, pretty, pink (and white and red and WTF orange?), legit wine that might cost more than 4 shots at the Union but doesn’t leave you feeling like you could die this second and be fine with it.
And now you know better than to drink all four mini bottles in one sitting … except for that time you drank four of those cute Sofia sparkling rose cans and your cat followed you into the bathroom the next morning all like, “WTF is she drinking out of the toilet, or..?”
ON PAYING FOR SHIT WITH YOUR OWN MONEY
I’m sorry, but, what the fuck.
I’ve had a job (or an unpaid internship, lol) since I was 16. I drove a Jeep Cherokee or a GMC Yukon 30 minutes both ways to my movie theater gig when I was in high school, so I know the pain of watching a paycheck get eaten at the gas station.
But this? This paying for things in the real world???
The fuck is RENT. The fuck is STUDENT LOANS. The fuck is your 600 year old cat having a $2,000 medical emergency conveniently just as you’re about to make a $1,000 deposit for the wedding florist??
#MOTHERLODE, #MOTHERLODE, #MOTHERLODE
ON CAREER
I have known I wanted to be a writer since I was five years old. That is so annoying, I know, and it is not even made up. I used to “write” stories on yellow college-ruled paper at my grandma’s in scribbles (complete with illustrations) and then read them out loud to my little sister, my parents, my teachers, anyone who would praise me, heh.
THEN, oh man, THEN I learned THE ALPHABET and it was game over. Scribbles turned into literal words turned into short stories based on sled-riding PS2 games turned into Power of the Pen trophies turned into 400-page unpublished novels about teenage girls with superpowers turned into journalism school turned into copywriting career turned into many, many tears shed wondering why no one tells you that getting paid to do what you love and/or are very good at is SO. FUCKING. HARD.
It’s so hard!
I know a lot of working creatives who struggle with this, and a few who actually thrive—set up Etsy accounts on the side, flip houses with their husbands, somehow have the brain space to churn out creative content that isn’t going straight to a potential retail customer’s inbox.
I used to write a bunch when I was a very cool teenager who had many friends and interesting hobbies. College ruined my creative drive, but I fell in love with writing about pop culture for a scrappy little online magazine, so it was okay. I took one creative writing class and when it was my turn to read my short story out load, I breezed through it Gilmore Girls-quick and blacked out and the professor was like, “WOW. But also …. hilarious.”
As much as I love my job, and the fact that I have (humbly) gotten most of my co-workers to call me “copy queen” and I have a boss who lets me and the emoji keyboard do pretty much whatever I want all over the social media—it’s not writing for ME.
Two years ago, I made a New Year’s resolution (lmfao) to write more for me, and maybe eventually for Netflix audiences everywhere, but to adapt a book into a three-season action comedy executive produced by JJ Abrams, you first must write the book. I tried to set aside 1 hour a day to write, or at least think about the story I was trying to very wordily tell. I have tried not to make myself feel bad if I just couldn’t write that day, or if two lines of dialogue felt like plucking my eyelashes out, or if I spent most of the designated writing time just double spacing some of the pages to see how long it really was. And I try to just enjoy the times where I feel like I’m really getting somewhere, when I’m inspired by the soundtrack I already made, or reading an AMA with Veronica Roth where she said don’t beat yourself up about the lulls because the excitement will always come back again. And it’s true! The last year it has been mostly as bursts of sass in blog form, but I have continued to (re)write this “book” I started when I was 17.
I always thought I would have written a book by 30, and not just a book that only my closest confidantes have ever read, but one on the shelves in between Cabot and Crichton. I’m not there yet, but I am 132 (plus some pages I haven’t double spaced) pages closer than I have been in the last ten years, and I’ll take that as a tiny win today.
And then in the next decade, I can do some more self-reflection on how being told you’re a “gifted” student at age 8 sets you up for a life of tying your self-worth to your productivity, but, you know. I’m trying to decide what the next decade of my career looks like—is it in fashion, which is fun but so freaking draining, is it in something I feel less “passionate” about, but might leave me some more space to write things I am passionate about?***
I don’t know, and it drives me nuts because as I will explain in a few sections—I am a person who really likes to know.
So to anyone else out there putting 110% into their 9-5, who genuinely do like their jobs and their co-workers and the compliments they get on their hilarious copy but would also love to not feel like you wish you could just unplug your brain from the wall after one more presentation about kids’ jeans … I hear you, I’m with you, and anything you manage to create for yourself is good enough.
ON LOVE
Wow! I did it! I managed to mostly avoid toxic, terrible romantic relationships my entire life and only blindly chased like two dudes in college before I found the one, narrowly evading the age of Tinder? It was easy? He loves me even though I don’t like basketball or whiskey or sweatpants and he also loves the “Fast & the Furious” franchise?????
I remember sitting in Donkey Coffee the day after Ryan and I made out for the first time and telling one of my best friends, “This feels….different help I really like him?!” It was maybe six-ish months after that before he asked, “Are you my girlfriend?” and I said, “I don’t know, am I?” and he said, “I don’t know, do you want to be?” and I said, “I don’t know, do I wan—duh.” Or something generally that charming.
And now we’re getting married! I have spent the majority of this last decade with Ryan, and I wish I could bestow some great love secret, but it’s really just … easy?
If your partner loves you, tells you you look pretty every day even though you do NOT, lol, and you are like “you don’t have to do that,” lets you pick the crispy pepperonis off the pizza, lets you always go first with the December advent calendar because your birthday is an odd number, lets you vent feminist anger but supports you or listens about things he doesn’t understand, lets you have the better spot on the couch, and lets you mention him in your blog—then you should probably plot with your roommate to corner him when you go to the bathroom at the bar so she can be like, “ARE YOU GOING TO LOCK IT DOWN.” because that’s what I did and look how it’s working out for me!
ON FRIENDSHIP
My writing voice is much more extroverted than my actual self. I don’t like big crowds, I don’t have a wide net of acquaintances. My circle is small, but it is ride or die.
I’m not someone who entertains the idea of 3495689 peripheral friends, because what is the fucking point if they can’t recite “Mad Men” scenes with you or cry/laugh over dumbass things you did in college such as walk home at 2 a.m. almost every night by yourself and pursue boys just because they were tall? Or better yet, cry more about we’ll call them… “interesting” … middle school fashion choices? Or speak in code words that literally only you two know about, because you have always been the two kids whispering in the grocery store aisle playing “fake world” while your mom shopped for dinner for the week?
Here are some random things I think about when I think of my best friends: staying on campus a long Memorial Day weekend and marathoning the “Planet of Apes” movies, with a few emotional bonding moments in-between Mark Wahlberg action scenes; too many nights spent drinking too many drinks and eating too many pieces of toast at the 24-hour diner next door to my best friend’s place; that same best friend sitting on the floor of my dorm room with me and watching, like, 10 episodes of “How I Met Your Mother” because I didn’t feel like going out after breaking up with my high school boyfriend; my new crew of forever friends being strictly anti that high school ex, even though they didn’t really need to be, but it WAS kinda nice because we wound up at the same parties and it made it way less awkward when I had more friends with me; yelling into people’s faces how much I love them while offering them their third homemade Jell-O shot at parties for the online magazine I ran; starting some destiny shit when I introduced my sister to her future partner at a HallOUween party at that same apartment; a great friend and future roommate brushing my hair out of my face at another party as I sat on the floor in a stranger’s room crying because someone I loved had hurt me so bad; my entire editorial staff becoming my best friends for life, and standing beside me as I started to cry excessively at parties and on Court Street senior year lol like I would never see them again; screaming about how good “Spider-Man: Homecoming” is do you even understand when I came back to visit those friends and those bars later; spontaneous post-grad trips to Columbus so I could very obviously flirt with a bassist I liked; phone calls at approximately 2 a.m. EST on a Thursday when I got engaged to that bassist; thinking about seeing all of these people next year at our wedding, and should I invest in some good waterproof mascara yesterday, or.
I’m a firm believer in “chosen family,” and mine includes some actual family**** and some family-by-default who will just never get rid of me and my asking them to do a shot with me for as long as we all live.
ON SELF WORTH
I’m an Enneagram Type 3. An ISTJ on the Myers-Briggs scale. A Sagittarius sun, Capricorn moon. I am THAT BITCH.
It is hard for me to relax, to chill the fuck out, to take a step back and be okay with where I am, right now, and not stress about where I “should” be, what my resume “should” have on it, what the next five years “should” look like.
I’m working on it. I’m not at a perfect place with it, at 30, and I don’t know that I will ever fully adapt my Type A personality to fit the mold of a “go with the flow” mindset. Because, okay, but the flow is going somewhere, right? Like where is it flowing? Is it flowing fast enough? Is it flowing the right way? WHEN DOES IT STOP FLOWING.
Anyway — a few self care-ish things I have tried to implement the last few years are as follows:
Taking breaks. If I could tattoo “TAKE YOUR PTO” on my forehead… but, really. If there is anything I feel absolute zero guilt about, it’s taking a day off. It’s hard to feel that way early in your career, when your job makes it feel like the Hunger Games to try and get the day after Christmas off, damn, but now? Now I am like, “Hello I am taking two weeks off right in the middle of our next big presentation planning.” Not may I. Not is it okay if I. But I AM.
(Also because I am getting married, and absolutely not rescheduling that again.)
Setting smaller goals. This is mostly related to the anxiety I feel about having not written the books I have always said I wanted to write. But also smaller goals, like, okay, maybe I don’t move out of Ohio this year, but maybe I find other ways to scratch that itch, like visiting my cool-ass friends in Seattle!***** Smaller goals, like, yes I will start (another) blog, but I won’t put a hard expectation of 1 blog a week on it.
I am far too goal-oriented to not have goals, but trying to meet the big ones with a bunch of little ones has helped.
Protecting my mental and emotional health. A no-brainer. Boundaries aren’t selfish, no matter who it is. This is a hard one to learn, or unlearn, depending on which side of the spectrum you started. But your mental and emotional health is your own, and once you start determining the good, and the bad, it’s pretty great. It’s not always easy to put this first and foremost, and it can take a lot of energy. But it’s something I think I’ve really made a lot of progress in as I enter the Jurassic age.
ON DRINKING AGAIN
DRINK MORE WATER, BITCH.
Now if you don’t mind, I need to go put on a sparkly midi skirt, get on Zoom and make my friends do Jell-O shots with me.
*Timestamped 11:02 a.m.
**AND SPIDER-MAN 3!!!!!!
***Spies, Michael Schur half-hour comedies, a specific episode of “Supernatural” …
****I’m lucky enough to be very, very close with my two sisters, as evidenced by how many times they have made me cry today with their nice words and “you’re my role model” and gifts and existence.
*****Not saying I teared up seeing the Starbucks Reserve IRL, but.
hi, i’m holly. 