Year 30
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I turned thirty last week.
I write one of these every year. It’s become a ritual. I start a week before my birthday and go through my photos, calendar, and journal - trying to remember what happened. I look for patterns, acknowledge the journey, and sketch what might come next. I find the whole process grounding.
Last year was about thriving. The one before was about survival. This year has been different. Turning the page on a decade feels heavy. I don’t have a theme to build around yet, but I have an urge to get this right. In the past, I would’ve forced a theme. Maybe even asked ChatGPT to help find one. But this time, I feel compelled to sit with the discomfort of squeezing ten years into one blog.
When I do, a couple of thoughts keep bothering me.
Did I do enough?
Shouldn’t I know more by now?
Society doesn’t help. Neither does the internet.
On one side, there’s family - quietly (or not so quietly) expecting the usual milestones: marriage, a house, stability. On the other side, there’s Instagram. Whatsapp. LinkedIn. A live, curated feed of people I grew up with. It becomes hard not to compare. We all started from roughly the same place, but at thirty the divergence feels insane.
So what does making it even mean? Have I?
The resume version of my twenties
- I left my childhood home at the start of the decade for undergrad.
Moved to Delhi for my first job, worked for the Indian government, had the Prime Minister launch my project. - Fell in love, got into my first relationship. Got dumped a few months later because I was overdramatic.
- Migrated to the US. Fell back in love with academia at Georgia Tech.
- Got into running. Started cooking my own food.
- Lost touch with friends. Made new ones. Lost touch with them too.
- Got married. Moved coasts. Got divorced.
- Injured my lower back; my body felt unreliable for the first time.
- Discovered that my parents are imperfect, like me
- Started a company. Raised money. Pivoted three times. Now have an office overlooking the Empire State Building.
- Spent two years in therapy learning how to name emotions
- Built my chosen family of friends & cousins - with whom I’ve laughed and cried on long calls.
I’m sure I’m missing plenty, but you get the idea. That’s the résumé. It looks full. Even impressive.
What it doesn’t show is the cost.
It doesn’t show what it feels like to move homes every year.
It doesn’t show what it feels like to miss festivals in India.
It doesn’t show the guilt of staying away from parents.
It doesn’t show how under-confident I felt starting my own company.
It doesn’t show the discomfort of setting boundaries.
It doesn’t show the battles I fought in my own head.
It doesn’t show how hard it can be to take care of myself.
And it doesn’t show the grief of losing Bruno and the guilt of not being there.
Throughout my twenties, I kept moving because movement felt like progress. Standing still felt dangerous.
At 30, I’m tired. But not defeated. I’ve stopped sprinting. I’m still clueless, just a bit wiser.
A toast to my next decade
Instead of goals, I have hopes for my next decade. When I turn forty, I want to look back at this list and either see what I became - or gently laugh at how little I knew. Either way, it’ll be fine. So here they are -
- I hope I practice compounding, especially when nothing feels meaningful.
- I hope I commit fully - to people, to work, to ideas.
- I hope fun is the unit of my life.
- I hope I simplify.
- I hope I bet on myself.
I’ve always liked how some authors end books - not with closure, but with continuity. A.A. Milne ends Winnie-the-Pooh with the sense that something is still moving, even after the page closes.
That’s how my twenties feel. They’re going into a box of nostalgia. I’ll open it often. Sometimes with pride. Sometimes with regret.
That feels like enough for now.
Celebrated with friends at an art cafe in Brooklyn