How the heck did I get here?

It is the eve of my 35th birthday, my 36th year on this earth.

Sometimes I look around at all that encompasses my life and think how in the world did I get here?  College seems like 100 years ago.  High school?  I can’t even fathom.  And those were years where you were so self-consumed, each day, month, year was an eternity.

Yet here I am, at the ripe age of 35, happily married to a man I adore, with two beautiful, fantastic and frustrating children.  How did it all go by so quickly, yet so slowly?

I do not know what this year has in store for us, for me.  I am at a point in my life where most of my time belongs to my children.  They need me more than I need the “other” things that I enjoy.

But I won’t forget myself.  I will try to visit with friends, go on dates with my husband, get a few mani-pedi’s and see a theater production or two.  I will go to the mall, keep up with latest marketing trends and read a few books.

I hope this year will allow us to get away together as a family – just the four of us.  I hope that the husband and I will be able to have a night or two ALONE with no kiddos, to reconnect with no interruptions.

Being in your mid-thirties brings a comfort to some things in your life.  I no longer feel the need to define myself in one sentence, more specifically by my job.   A few years out of school, I felt that my profession defined who I was…but it didn’t.

I am all things.

I am a mother, a wife, a daughter, and a sister.  I am a writer, a worrier, and a procrastinator.  I am a music lover, a coffee drinker and Target shopper.  I am a movie watcher, a fan of theater, a book fanatic.  I am a friend, a confidante, and so much more.

I grow, evolve, change every year.

This year holds endless opportunity.  I’m ready for it.