GGGOOOOOOOAAAAALLLL!!!!!!!

Ok, ok - not a soccer goal.... Life goals.

When I graduated college, I didn't want to believe that was the end of the fun. I refused to accept that from that day on, I'd be working. Just....working. Until I died. Or retired. Whichever came first. Not an uplifting thought, especially coming off of four years of partying my a** off.

So I made a deal with myself. I'd set goals. Clearly, everyone should have goals. But these goals would be set in roughly 5 year increments. I figured that was a reasonable time frame by which to accomplish important things. This definitely made the idea of 'working for the rest of my life' seem more tolerable.

When I went about setting my first round of goals, the sky was the limit! Fresh out of college, the world was my oyster. I had grand plans of snagging a prestigious job, with a healthy expense account, and moving to the Big City in a fancy apartment all to myself.

Sounded like a great start, right? I thought it was - until the economy tanked. The ensuing dot com crash wiped out any chance of snagging one of those highly coveted jobs at a snazzy start up that was oozing VC funding. Dot com parties turned into Pink Slip parties.

Needless to say, the lack of job availability put a serious damper on my '5 year goal' plan. Time to improvise. I decided to start small. I wasn't happy with the roommate situation...roommates that I called 'mom' and 'dad.' First goal - "move out of my parent's house before I'm 27." Very reasonable. The next step was a little more bold - "buy a house before I'm 30." One easy goal, one stretch goal. Great!

Then I started thinking of the 'pushing the boundaries' goals. These were goals I wanted to accomplish before settling down and getting married. More importantly, they were goals that really challenged me to grow as a person and step outside my comfort zone: Live in a foreign country. Become fluent in a foreign language. Take a vacation by myself. These may be difficult to reach but I knew these were things I had to accomplish before my 30s.

Fast forward 5 years... Progress on my goals? Check, check and check! What a sense of accomplishment! But then the reality hit - what the hell am I going to do about the next 5 years?? Everything amazing and seemingly out of my reach, had already been accomplished.

My reward for reaching these goals? No idea what the next set of goals should be. No direction. No guidance. All I could think was, What now????

And just like that, I felt just as confused and clueless as I did fresh out of college.

*Sigh*

Dedication Or Lack of Motivation?

You love your job. You're a hard worker. You stay in the same job for 5+ years because you enjoy your work so much. Some may call this dedication. But I wonder.... is it really dedication, or just lack of motivation? Moving on to a new job could be a good thing. Better perks and better pay. So why are you still in the same job?

I recently discussed this with a colleague who had just left a job he loved. While he was sad to have left a position he liked, he was excited and happy for his new job. He told me that being content in your job isn't always a good thing. It can keep you from seeking out a new job which could potentially make you infinitely more happy (and potentially more wealthy).

Interestingly, I feel like this same line of thinking can be applied to relationships. You think you're happy and so you stay. Then something forces a break up, far sooner than what you had in mind (Break up?? We're never going to break up!). This sends you into the downward spiral of insecurity, self doubt and the inconsolable sadness that comes from realizing that things will never be the same again. It feels like the world is going to end.

But what you don't realize is that maybe you weren't as happy as you thought. You stayed in that situation for so long that you actually lowered your standards and compromised your true feelings in order to maintain the status quo. Sacrificing a little happiness is better than being alone, right? And if you hadn't been forced out of that situation, you'd still be in it. Still compromising. Still not entirely happy, but just happy enough to stay.

Just like a reluctant fledgling needs to be pushed out of the nest and forced to spread its wings and fly, we too need to be pushed out of our comfort zone. What at first seems cruel or harsh, actually ends up being the best thing that could have possibly happened to us.

Think about it....How many times have you broken up with someone, swearing you'd never be happy again, only to find someone new who turns out to be 150 times better? This is the uplifting outcome that you must keep in mind while you're wallowing in your chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.

There are other fish in the sea - and most of the time, they're much better than what you just threw back.

Déjà vu...

I like to think of life like a video game - you have to successfully avoid various pitfalls on this level in order to pass to the next level. Each time something trips you up and you have to go back to the start, you have a better idea of the dangers that lie ahead when moving through that same level again. Hopefully, on this second go-around, you'll remember where you made a mistake last time and be able successfully avoid it this time. Ultimately, you'll be able to avoid all the pitfalls on that level and move on to the next level. Very similar to how one repeats the same mistakes in life, until they finally figure out a different way to handle a particular issue or situation and they're able to move past that roadblock.

Take dating, for example. How many times have you found yourself saying, 'Wait a minute....I've dated this guy before.' Not literally, of course, but figuratively. Maybe it stemmed from the high school obsession with 'The Bad Boy.' Every guy you've dated since high school bares some vague resemblance to the original 'Bad Boy' you fell for as a naive freshman.

Personally, I've found myself cycling through various versions of the same guy from different times in my life. There was the cute but insanely jealous guy from high school. Somehow, I found myself dating the same guy-type in my mid-twenties. The difference? I was far more aware of when things needed to end with the mid-twenties guy and was able to pull the plug on that relationship far quicker than I did the first time I encountered this guy-type my sophomore year of high school.

Okay, so there was some lesson learned there. A nugget of wisdom that I was able to glean from that first disaster so that I could avoid as big a disaster when I got older. But then why do I find myself still making mistakes in my 30s? Shouldn't I have learned enough life lessons from my teens and 20s to be able to avoid those same bad decisions?

I've made the mistake of falling for the smart-yet-vaguely-self-centered guy. So why did I fall for him again? I know how things ended with the first guy that fit this description, yet I still had hope that the second guy that fit this description might be different.... Nope. Ended in pretty much the same way. The only lesson I could apply from the first disaster was how best to handle the pain of heart ache.

When your heart breaks, its okay. Life goes on. Cliche as it sounds, you really will end up a stronger person. Despite the pain, I can now, in my 30s, see that heart ache is more an opportunity to improve my life in some positive way rather than seeing it as an end to the world as I know it. That constitutes as personal growth of some sort, right?

But until my heart finally catches up to what my brain has already realized, I'll just have to rely on my pint of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream to get me through.

Where to begin?

With so many jumbled thoughts swirling around my head, its a challenge deciding which ones to pluck out of the chaos and jot down, and which of those need a bit more time before they're fully baked. I suppose I can start at the beginning. Seems logical enough, right?

I am a young woman, in my early 30s...and rapidly approaching an early mid-life crisis. I have daily worries of winding up old and alone with my cats (and I don't even have cats!).

The crazy thing is that every one of my female friends, also in their 30s, is also experiencing (or has experienced) the exact same utter bewilderment of looking in the mirrror and saying 'How the heck did I end up here??'

We were all so bold and confident as we charged through our 20s, certain that life would only continue to get better as we hit 30. But instead, we find ourselves asking - What the heck happened to that cavalier self-esteem, I-can-conquer-the-world enthusiasm that I had so easily possessed in my 20s? When the hell did the simple decision of 'What color should I paint my kitchen?' have the power to bring me to tears? I love my job, so why does it take me 2 hours to get out of bed in the morning??

In one form or another, we're each facing our own early mid-life crisis.

Based on casual conversations with my friends, I have the sneaking suspicion we're not the only ones experiencing this 'phenomenon.' And if that's the case..... we shouldn't be hitting up the 'red wine therapy' alone.

Perhaps by sharing my experiences, other women out there can take some comfort in knowing they're not the only ones who are feeling this way. I'm hoping these (somewhat) daily blog posts will provide some laughter, some levity, maybe even some insights.

In any case, if you're a woman in your 30s and wondering why you suddenly seem to be digressing rather than progressing.... then this blog is for you.

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