30s and Hobbies

Posted by May

My shot of Red Ginger

Thirties is what I can say - the prime of a person's life. From the moment the clock strikes 12 on one's after 29th birthday, everything spelled differently from then on. D-E-C-I-S-I-O-N  is plain and easy 7 letter word but it takes a more than a day to wrap your mind around it.

Thirties is the time a woman declares she's found the one. The real one. It's the time you decide to say yes to the ring and a question, forget another decade of shopping alone. It's the time to start acting like the matured woman you envisioned yourself you'd become from the moment you started baking your own cookies from your very own kitchen. It is also the time you'd stop frozen in the middle of doing something, thinking that the living room lamps look better by the wall.

Thirties is the perfect time to sit and breathe. Your days of playing with your career, trying out different stuff for fun while making a decent living and start building one after your heart, one you truly desire doing for the rest of your days while keeping your dreams, new home, new family alive and happy.

Thirties is the time you start jogging. They say fat around the midsection starts to permanently settle because life has just gotten busier, you hardly notice them settling there. By the time you're 35, you finally sat and relax, you took notice of the words and perfect description of FLABS.

So you are a writer. You write to live. You write to share compartments of feelings and experiences. Many say, you write to breathe. But then again, at thirties, you discover breathing through your pen is never enough. There are times you cannot write. There are times words are as elusive as an eel in water. So you discover other side of you that you would like to explore. And no, taking care of home, husband and children are not hobbies when you treasure your self-worth. As much as you love your new life, you have to give time for yourself. Otherwise, you lose the sense of who you are.

So you take photography classes. What an amazing hobby. A simple thing to point, decide an angle and shoot. What you get is a million more other hobbies out of a little camera. Out of one little shot, you discovered how you like to be a historical travel writer, how you need to name all the creatures you capture in your photographs and what do you know, you're suddenly hitting the encycpedia section of a bookstore just to put a name in a shot.

So you start cooking lessons. And this proves the saying "the fastest way to a man's heart is through his stomach" is 100% right. Not that men love eating but men love eating what their women home cooked for them. It takes courage to peel those vegetables, dice meat and fry fish for someone who lived life eating in diners and cafeterias. But so does everything else.

And above all, thirties is the time you decide to take the road of chasing money and success. Where everything else is dwarfed by bigger decisions, bigger challenges, bigger creativity. The time you decide to take the business world. And they say it's a man's world. And I say, what men can do, women can do better. In their 30s.

Thanks for reading! - May