Thirty Before Thirty: Accomplished

Published November 13, 2014

I’m turning 31 in five days. I’ve had my final Thirty Before Thirty posts sitting in draft since before I turned 30. To be honest, I grew more as a person in the 360 days of November 18, 2013 until now than I did the entire year of being 29. But that is another set of posts for later. Don’t worry; they are also sitting in the draft folder. At this rate, I’ll publish them by Hillary’s reelection. (No, this joke is not old yet.)

I am very proud of all my accomplishments and failures before I turned 30, but it was a year. This list helped me stay somewhat grounded as Josh finished his Supreme Court clerkship. There is a beautiful symmetry in the fact that I completed 18/30 and I was born on the 18th day of the month.

And now, the official list of things I accomplished, crossed off and finished before turning 30:

Gettin’ Physical, Physical

2. Go soda free for three months

I Am Not A Robot

8. Visit the new dermatologist with the new insurance before July 1
9. Go in for a regular physical not an OB/GYN appointment and make sure my shots are up to date

Be a Grown-up

12. Go to an open house in DC with Josh to look at local real estate
13. Pay off at 1/4 of my student loan with money that is solely mine and not combination Mc/Johnson (actually paid off my entire loan with another work bonus and my student loan savings. Posted about it in the comments here)
14. Combine all McJohnson financial accounts, including investments, in Mint.com
16. Work, at work, and not use it as a headquarters for my volunteering activities
17. Start implementing a career plan (see link above)

Disposed Income

19. Get a blowout at Drybar
20. Redesign this blog

Rumbly In My Tumbly

22. Make definitive plans to dine at a restaurant that requires advanced reservations and funds for my 30th birthday: Minibar, Inn at Little Washington, etc.
23. Eat at Little Serow

For Something Completely Different

24. Write a piece and submit it to the Hairpin/Awl/Billfold

Visitors & Travel

26. Get Dad (and Mum, but mostly Dad) to come to a Supreme Court oral argument
27. Go to Europe with Josh, go to Europe with Josh, GO TO EUROPE WITH JOSH

Wait, Why Did This Get All Serious?

28. Find a life coach/therapist that doesn’t start a session with “I want to talk about how something you said last session upset me personally” and talk about all my feelings at least four times
29. Stop doing things I no longer want to be doing and have no desire to be doing just because I have some sort of death-wish or guilt complex that I can’t even identify the source of