Turning 30

So my thirtieth birthday was yesterday, and I'm pretty happy about it. I think my thirties are going to be my best decade yet. As a friend put it, in your twenties, one tends to ramble on without knowing what the hell they're talking about, and in your thirties, you still ramble on without knowing what you're talking about but it doesn't matter because you don't care what anybody thinks anymore.

It's true, I'm feeling more at peace with life and myself than I have in a while. Finally learning what it means to live in the moment and work on building a creative and happy life. The sun came out for my birthday and I spent the morning basking in it on the terrace with my coffee and journal. Then I went to the botanical garden and basked some more, this time in the company of many friendly feral cats, and ran into a couple people I knew (Buenos Aires is starting to feel small!). Then I went for an hour massage, followed by a dinner out with Pablo at a vegetarian restaurant we'd been meaning to try, which turned out to be the best vegetarian food I've had in Argentina yet. Friday, I'm having a birthday dinner with friends--grilled pizzas on the terrace and an excruciatingly divine chocolate cake. More details on that later.

So I'm now right smack in the middle of Saturn Return--an astrological phenomenon that happens every 28 years or so when Saturn returns to the position it was it when you were born. It lasts about four years--28 to 32--and it can be a time of solidifying life decisions (like marriage or professional milestones), or it can really shake things up and force you to look at ways you need to change your life and let go of unnecessary baggage in order to find your true path. The latter is definitely what Saturn Return has been for me, and these past couple years have included a lot of pain and some rough lessons, but halfway through Saturn Return, I think I can say I've done a lot of internal work and made a lot of good, courageous decisions, and if I continue to apply myself and work hard these next couple years, things are looking up. Yeah, thirties are going to kick ass.

Long Time, No Blog

O.K., so I've been ridiculously horrible about not keeping up my blog! It becomes a vicious cycle: I get lazy and don't blog and then people lose interest and don't check my blog and then I don't blog again because I figure nobody's reading it and I'm just writing out into lonely cyberspace and I don't want to harass all my friends with e-mails saying, "read my blog again!" because then they'll read it and I'll get lazy again and not post and everybody will get mad at me.

But I digress. I think it's time I started blogging again, as I've got a new computer with pretty blue lights and a "borrowed" wireless connection in my apartment, so I figure those are as good reasons as any. If anybody's out there, by all means leave a comment, even if you're an extraterrestrial and I don't understand what you're saying, at least I will know there is a soul out there who has attempted contact in this never-ending, expanding blogosphere.

So I'm back in Buenos Aires for the last couple gloomy chilly rainy weeks of winter which I figure will help me to appreciate the spring more. I went back to the states for a much-reveled in month and a half of summer, zoomed around visiting family and friends, continued playing vendor in the Cultural Survival Bazaars, went whitewater rafting, hung out by the ocean, celebrated my thirtieth birthday early a couple times (eek, the real thing is soon! eh, whatever. I'm realizing thirty doesn't mean anything anymore, used to be people's whole life spans, but hey....)

Before my trip to the states I had a bit of a challenging run of things, got my bag stolen, broke my foot (during which my most loyal companion was a black cat missing one of her paws who took to me quite possessively), got my apartment broken into and camera and computer stolen--along with years of writing, bounced around without any form of stable, affordable housing for a while, and have learned much about the chaos and instability of Argentine life.

On the upside, I found a great writers' group, have been bravely carving away at my writers' block, loving the fair trade thing, teaching freelance English, being in love, speaking Spanish like a porteno, making friends, learning the art of patience, and being grateful that I can walk again.

I now have a cute tiny studio apartment off a shared rooftop terrace, and I feel like a parrot in a little concrete nest, looking out at the other nests with their tufts of plants on their balconies, and listening to thundertsorms pounding hard on my roof.

Will write more, I promise.