The Lessons of a 29 Year Old Entrepreneur

My thirties are almost here!! I am in the final year of my twenties and I couldn't be happier. Being in your twenties is not all that it is cracked up to be. When you hit 20, you are ecstatic that you aren't a teenager any more, but that soon wears off after your 21st birthday. During the rest of your twenties, you still try to hold onto the youth you still have by going out and partying until sun up, all while trying to figure out what you should do with your life in addition to holding down a meaningless job until you find your dream job. Not to mention trying to find a life partner on top of it all! It's exhausting being in your twenties. Thank goodness my thirties are only a couple of months away.

I have led a very interesting and complex life so far. At the age of 7, I was running around craft fairs and markets as my mom sold her handmade products, hoping to turn her business into a success. At the age of 13, I started working at my mom's store on the weekends and got a second job at the age of 16 while also going to high school. By the age of 20, I dropped out of 2 colleges, put myself in AA and was sober for a year. During that time I completed my Certified Nursing Assistant Program and started working at a Nursing Home in Pennsylvania. During this time, love was won and lost but finally I met my husband to be and we moved in after only dating a month. After only 2 years as a CNA, I was injured on the job and had to go on Medical leave. I never returned to the Nursing home. At the age of 24 with rent and bills to pay, with no sense of direction, I bounced from job to job for over a year, looking for my calling. Finally after a year of interviews and quitting, at the age of 25, I stopped looking for a job and started my business & blog. Around that time, we moved into my now husbands parent's house and I worked from home. In addition from running my business, I took care of my husband's father who has Alzheimer's and our elderly dog. Now at the age of 29, I have been in business and blogging for almost 5 years while moving around from state to state, following my husband for his job. In 22 years, I went from a little girl running through craft fairs thinking about fairies to a married female entrepreneur and blogger with a sense of direction (who still believes in fairies).

When you look back at your twenties, as a 30-year-old, you remember all of the crazy shit you did in the name of glory, business and/or love and you take each experience and turn it into a life lesson that shouldn't be forgotten. Our twenties are a time to explore ourselves. To push ourselves to the limit. To find out what we are really made of before the clock strikes 30 and we realize it is time to grow the hell up. Our parents before us, were married by the age of 20 and had multiple babies before the age of 25. They didn't get a chance to experience their twenties like we did. They experienced mommy & me clubs and late night feedings while we experienced raging night clubs and late night feedings at the Taco Bell. We might have started our lives later but that doesn't mean our lives are any less filled with experience and knowledge. It's a different kind of experience and knowledge.

My favorite part about turning 30 is receiving more respect from everyone, young and old. You have been on this Earth for 30 years without dying! Now you can be taken seriously by your peers, friends, relatives and co-workers. In your twenties, you are given the crap jobs. The jobs no one else wants. The gopher jobs. You aren't taken seriously in your ventures and no one wants to give you responsibility. But in your thirties, you are given more responsibility and with more responsibility comes more respect. When I was 25, just starting my business, I was shown zero respect and many thought I wouldn't succeed. I was in my twenties and many potential clients saw me as inexperienced due to my age. I knew how to run a business and I had multiple clients, but my age was a disadvantage at the time. I was even let go from many jobs due to my age. I was told I was too young for one thing or not old enough for another, even though I was more than qualified for the position. Now that I am older, people view me as wise and knowledgeable with a good head on my shoulders. I guess it just comes with age.

This is not to say that everyone in their 30s has it together. A lot of the time, I wonder if our parents got it right. Our parents partied hard in their teens and grew up fast by their twenties. By their thirties, they were homeowners, parents and established in their careers. By their 40s, they were buying boats and taking vacations every year. Pretty sweet. Some people in our generation, on the other hand, don't seem to want to grow up but I don't blame them sometimes. Jobs are tough to find for those who are looking, borrowing is hard when you don't have much of a credit history, and starting out on your own while having a ridiculous amounts of college loans to pay off is a good reason to eat, sleep, rave 24/7. I am not afraid to admit that I like my life the way it is at 29. I have no kids, great friends, the perfect husband and the cutest dog. I am also not afraid to admit that I like to stay up late, party hard, and enjoy the randomness of youth. Many of us are putting off the big responsibilities, like homeownership and babies, to hold onto the lives and the late nights that we have come to know and love. In addition to It's a big step, going from your twenties to your thirties. Why not ease that transition with a night under the electric sky?

Maybe most of us are just scared to grow up. I know I am afraid of losing myself as an individual when I continue to grow and progress in my life. I am scared of becoming that cliché soccer mom that only lives for her kids and doesn't even have time to wash her hair. I am worried I will lose all my friends the older I get, due to all the responsibilities surrounding me and lack of time that exists in adulthood. I am nervous I won't have time for myself to just sit back and relax with a nice cold hard apple cider and watch the clock tick by, without a care or responsibility in the world. No wonder we are all holding on to our youth for as long as we can, so we can feel the way we felt before we grew into the people that we are today. Just hope I like the person I grow into. I think we all hope for that.

I am sad to see my twenties go but excited to start this new chapter that is adulthood. I will miss my twenties with all of the craziness that comes along with it, from random road trips with nowhere to sleep to driving all night to rave until the early morning. You will be missed 20s and look out 30s!

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