My twenty-eighth birthday was this month. And somehow where twenty-seven felt natural, twenty-eight feels so much older. twenty-eight is almost thirty, twenty-eight is my twenties coming to a close. It’s crazy what one year will do to your perception of age. I don’t know if I’ll have that deep emotional response to turning thirty, only time will tell, but as for twenty-eight, I feel a little behind, I’m not sure why, I’ve reached all the points on my self imposed timeline, but somehow I feel like I should be doing more.

I’ve talked about how our culture extends adolescence into our twenties, and how it’s a relatively new phenomenon, and I’ve talked about how I’ve tried to avoid it, but somehow I’m reaching my late twenties wondering if I should be more at this age. I don’t know why, I’m a wife, mother, and homeowner with a full time job. I’ve reached my milestones. I’m very happy with my life. I’ve made good choices.

This lingering feeling isn’t abnormal, I’ve heard it from my friends who are also nearing thirty. How we expect people to go from their free and wild twenties to their mature and developed thirties almost overnight I’ll never know. It’s a deep flaw in the way we view certain ages as mature and others as not.

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