I turn 31 in November.
You can go ahead and read that first sentence of my blog with melancholy or excitement, but I said it with a flat tone. All the hype around my 30s made me quite anxious for the unknown, but all that changed was that I became a mother. So, no, not an age thing! That was the wisdom I chose for myself and age did not bring it to me.

Not lying! I did not become a mother because I am afraid that my eggs are diminishing by the day, rather it felt right at that time! Call that an almost-30s wisdom!! Perhaps, who knows right?

So, back to my state of ageing an year older… It feels different! And no, eggs are still in place! But, motherhood changes you for the better. It served me with the kind of selflessness and maturity that age could never have given me.

The 31st year of my life started with my third trimester. And do you know what that was all about? Making conscious decisions for the well-being of an unborn (and also unseen) creature! I mean, that was some advanced level of unforeseen love that I held in my heart!

So, well, to be very frank, the lines between my ageing and changing in this 1 year are quite blur.

Had we (husband & I) made a decision of postponing our endeavour of bringing an extension of our personalities to life in the form of a tiny human, by say 5 years, would I have suddenly been a changed person?
I don’t think so!

To give my answer a weighted argument, I still have not changed much! I still went ahead and got five thousand hundred pictures clicked in my last holiday (without the baby) and chose 1 of those for my Instagram feature. I still did not travel light though I had to pack for my baby too. To be fair to him, he did not travel light either. I am a bad influence, we can say that!

I sure have more respect for the parents on this planet, and on any other planet too. This is because I know the struggles first hand. And more often than not, I wonder what a judgemental non-parent human I was once!

The change in me is not the 30s talking. It is the responsible mother in me. I still am impulsive but I take better decisions now. I channel those impulses well. Self-restraint is something I need to learn and I am rooting for age to play its magic here! Because, nothing else seems to work!

But are we comparing the 31ish ME to the 29ish ME or the 20s ME?? Well, that changes a lot!

The 20s me was more carefree, made novice choices, had not felt grief, did not take responsibility of her actions, thought friendships are forever, felt love happens only once and read only exciting fiction & ran away from mindful non-fiction! So, well, that way i have changed! But change is the only constant, is it not?

I have started to believe that this might be my favourite decade. It is such a balanced time of my life. I have thirty years of experience and learnings well-collected and thirty more of unknown to still experience and anything above that is bonus.

I am an introvert. Definitely, an introvert. Otherwise I would have been VLOG-ing about it and not Blogging! And I am scared of failures. I always was. I know my weaknesses but I do not address them. I never did. I loose my calm but I regain it too. That is how I always was. This introspection has just made me realise that the basic ME refuses to change, rather, resists it! But, time to get wiser. Lets hope this decade brings in this gradual but constant change in me!