Around this time last year, I was convinced that I had gone through my Saturn return. You know the one: that much-written about, famously transformational time in a person’s life when the planet Saturn returns to the position it occupied at the time of your birth. It’s supposed to take place every 29.5 years and bring significant changes. After a summer that included a professional spiral and a romantic quasi-relationship that started as swiftly and passionately as it ended, I thought mine had come and gone already. I thought.
Well, think again, I told myself about a month and a half ago, a week before I turned 30. I was on my fifth consecutive late-night stroll—the 20,000-step kind of walk that, as one friend put it, one embarks on with the noble mission of untying the knots in one’s life. Yet with every walk, I found that I had even more questions.
Could it be, I wondered, that I was just spiraling—or “crashing out,” as the kids say these days—about turning 30?
I’ve never especially minded getting older, but my 30s in particular long seemed full of promise: bigger paychecks, better boyfriends, closer friends—quality over quantity. And besides, at 29 I considered myself professionally established (to say “successful” would be to risk jinxing it). I had good, great friends. My parents were healthy, even if far away in my home country. I was single—I’ve been single—but that’s never felt like a big deal. In brief, I didn’t have much to be anxious about.
But I was anxious. After relocating to the United States for university, I’d spent most of my 20s embracing the very Millennial grind mentality and working a job plus a side gig plus a passion project, fixated on the person I’d become. Things worked out, and I’ve always been proud of my work ethic, but this summer I realized that I had burned myself out.
Suddenly, who I am—and the life I want to build for myself—outside of work has become a priority. I no longer have the appetite to just hustle. My dad used to tell me that life was a marathon, not a sprint—and I thought I had a grip on that idea. Now I actually do.
This summer I took those endless walks to the places that shaped the old me. I had a peach-flavored Arizona Iced Tea (the canned version, of course) and a sandwich from the deli near the first place I lived in Brooklyn. I walked by old apartments, first-date spots with the many boys I didn’t love before, and reflected not on who I’ve become, but on the people I’ve been and how they’ve contributed to who I am now. Places change, sure, but seldom as fast or as unpredictably as we do ourselves.
Then, to mark my 30th, I decided to throw a party, and in true Leo form I called it A Night of a Thousand Josés. My friend Jessee O’Neil and I made balloons and stickers featuring my old selves: the middle school nerd; the angsty, green-haired high schooler; the bleach-blond college twink; the buzzcut 24-year-old; the put-together fashion editor. We hosted the party at the Public Hotel, one of those places I used to visit often—first as a college intern in town for the summer, then as a broke freelancer. Back then, I thought there was nothing more New York than the view from the rooftop at the Public—and I still do. It’s the kind of view that reminds me that one of my biggest dreams—to live in this city—actually came true.
After focusing for so long on what I wanted professionally, seeing friends from most periods of my life all together in one room—plus, hilariously, the South African pop star Tyla, whose stylist is my friend Ronnie Hartleben—helped me to focus on what I want personally, and what I’ve already found: so much love. I decided to stop worrying about what I should be doing, and instead focus on what makes me feel most like myself. No one, I’ve realized, is thinking, or looking, at me as closely as I am myself, and nobody really cares what I do as much as I think they do.
The summer I turned 30 was one of transformation, self-reflection, letting go. I hope I can remember it as the summer I stopped living carefully and just started living fully.
