This is 30
The average age for Peace Corps Volunteers is 27. Only 4% of PCVs worldwide are over 50. * As far as I can tell, Peace Corps doesn’t provide a statistic for the median age of its volunteers, but my guess would be that it’s around 24. Today, I turn 30, which means I am old for a Peace Corps Volunteer, and sometimes I feel it.
The past week has been a particularly reflective time for me. Birthdays often bring up existential thoughts about my place in the passage of time. And this birthday is a big one. My first decade of adulthood is behind me.
Your twenties are a notoriously turbulent decade full of questions and uncertainty. The ground always seems to be shifting beneath your feet. The road ahead seems long and full of obstacles. Thinking about my future would anguish me so much that I often broke down into fits of anxious tears.
How do I get a job with the major I loved but don’t know how to make a living off? Why do I all the sudden feel like being a woman is a disadvantage? How do I move through the world in an adult female body? In which direction should I take my career? Do I find a job I love or one that will allow me to live comfortably? How can I be taken seriously in the workplace? Where do I live? How do I live within my means? Is it bad that I want to make money? Will I ever find someone I want to marry? Do I even want to get married? Do I want kids? What if I’m not able to have children? Where do I want to go? And how do I get there? What does happiness look like for me? What is my place in the world? What have I learned? What have I accomplished? What has it all come to????
People often say that your 30s are a calmer decade. You know yourself better and you’re not as concerned with what other people think. Things begin to settle into place.
2018, the year I turned 29, was one of the most unsettling years of my life.
I left behind a cushy corporate job and the city I had lived in my entire adult life to work in a foreign country for two years and then two months later got evacuated from that country, moved in with my parents and had to rebuild my life in a city that surprised me with more culture shock that the country I had been evacuated from.
A year ago, no aspect of my life gave me any hope that on my 30th birthday, I would feel any sense of stability.
And yet, I do feel like I have found stable ground.
29 was a transitional year, one in which I recommitted to a dream, reformulated a long-term plan, set myself up for future success, learned to be gentle with myself and met a man whom I love.
It turns out letting go of so many anxious thoughts about my future and embracing the hope that come what may I will find a way forward has freed up a lot of space in my head. It’s given me more space to reflect on what is happening in my present, to take in the places and people around me. It’s made me more introspective and less afraid of judgment – my own or others’. It’s made me worry less about whether I’m too old to do what I want (serve in the Peace Corps, go to grad school) and focus more on how to carve out the life that I want regardless of my age.
And so, I’m launching this website as a birthday gift to myself, in celebration of how far I’ve come and with hope for whatever may come.
Cheers to 30 years!
Have you ever felt or been told you’re too old or too young to do something? Tell me about it in the comments below.
*source: https://www.peacecorps.gov/news/fast-facts/
Photo: at the board walk along the Rio Magdalena in Sabanagrande, the town I lived in for the 3 months of Pre-Service Training
