The Big Three Oh

So I turned thirty last weekend. It wasn't so bad. Not bad at all actually. I had been dreading this day for a long time. I had known for many years that I would turn thirty on a Saturday. The pressure was on, you can't do nothing when your thirtieth birthday is on a Saturday. So what to do? I thought about escaping to the remote east fjords of Iceland. But my family and friends demanded a party so I opened the door to my small flat and somehow food magically appeared and people showed up. Only thing I did was to splurge on the most fabulous dress.

My hardest birthday was when I turned twenty-six. I didn't sleep at all that night and when I had to get up to go to work at six am I was still awake. Saying goodbye to twenty-five was a bigger step for me than turning thirty. Twenty-five is still young, you can still go on Interrail, for example, and get discount airfares. At twenty-six those luxuries are over and the clock starts ticking towards thirty.

But really, the difference between then and now: I finished my Master's degree, I lived in New York, moved from New York, volunteered in India, came back to Iceland, worked as a flight attendant, guest coordinator for the Reykjavik Int. Film Festival, became the editor of Málið, a free weekly paper and ended up here with Reykjavik.com and ReykjavikMag so that you dear readers can read this silly column. I got rid of my boyfriend of six years, bought my own apartment and started living life to the fullest. Not so bad.

I recently read an article in the New York Times where it was stated that in New York thirty was the new twenty-two. Single girls in the big city were throwing huge birthday bashes to make up for lack of eh - wedding parties. The 30th-birthday party had become a showcase of sorts for those women making no bones about being single. Once turning thirty was slightly irritating and people were in no mood to broadcast the news but today, when marriage is more often delayed past thirty and the twenties are often an extended adolescence, a thirtieth birthday feels more like what twenty-one once represented. No longer a day to count up regrets but to pop open the Moet & Chandon. Perhaps Carrie Bradshaw and her friends from Sex and the City have something to do with it. One girl in the article sung Frank Sinatra's „I did it my way" from the top of her lungs. That's what we do today, we do it our way.

Nevertheless, I looked at my hands when I woke up on Saturday and they looked like old lady's hands. That's the first show of age. I'm more tired in the morning. I might actually have to start going to bed at midnight. My first wrinkle I spotted when I was 28, it was devastating. Now I'm fine with my smiling wrinkles, they're just like dimples. I also have more freckles, before they would only turn up on my face, now my arms, shoulders and chest is filled with freckles. I stopped starving myself. I never had the ballerina body, Marilyn Monroe would have been a better goal for me to strive for, I can see that now. But the only thing that really has changed is my confidence. I don't sweat the small stuff any more. I'm comfortable in my own skin and happy with my life. Of course, I had to go through all the turmoil of the twenties to get there, and of course it was a hell of a ride. But now I live off the fruits of that ride, more secure and confident about who I am and what I want. And of course that scares the men away, so it will continue to be just me, myself and I.

hannabjork@reykjavik.com