30 Lessons I Learned Before Turning 30

It’s my golden birthday (also called champagne birthday) and that means I turned thirty! Since I’ve entered my late-twenties I dreaded this change in the second digit of my age. Mostly because I felt like time was passing too quickly and I wasn’t ready to turn thirty. But instead on this birthday, I feel calmer and kind of excited for my new decade. I want to celebrate with a roundup of all the lessons (in no particular order) that I have collected in the past 30 years.

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Honor by Thirty Umrigar

Let me start by saying, this book has a beautiful cover. From the synopsis, I knew that this would be a heavy read. It deals with religion and honor killings in India. But reading this book was harder than I thought it would be. Not because of the heavy topics but because of the many flaws in the characters and bad plot choices.

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When the Dreaded Reading Slump Comes Calling

As a child, I used to be an avid reader. I loved stories especially loved mystery and fantasy books. I was crazy about books and was always in search of a good story. However, after I completed grad school and started working full time the number of books I read every year started dwindling. Initially, I chalked it up to my big life change and told myself once I have a routine, I will start reading more. During this time, my life was getting complicated and my mental health was deteriorating. It is extremely hard to read when you are anxious all the time. However, through it all I was craving the beautiful world of books and wanted to get back to reading.

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A Man Call Ove by Fredrik Backman

For years, I had heard amazing things about this book from everyone who read it. It also seemed like it was a popular choice for book clubs. I have a tendency to avoid books/ tv shows which seem like a hype because I constantly feel like I will be disappointed because of all the wonderful reviews. So for many years, A Man Called Ove (pronounced Ooo-weh) sat in my bookshelf untouched. Last year, I got stuck in a major book slump. I just could not find myself interested in any book I picked up. I would read the first few pages/chapters and completely lose interest. I was scouring my bookshelf for any book which my mind would like to stick with and be interested in. I decided to try A Man Called Ove.

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July Intentions

Half of 2020 has gone by and I think everyone would agree that it isn’t like anything we planned for when the year began. Since I’ve been social distancing for major part of the year because of the pandemic and global unrest which this year has seen, it’s easy to say there’s no point in planning because no one knows what to expect. This way of living however, I have realized leads to days which spill into each other, weeks and months which fly by without notice. When I look back, it makes me wonder what I did with all my time. Hence, I feel that there is value to live life intentionally even when there’s so much uncertainty around rather than just go with the flow. So here’s a list of intentions for the the first month of the second half of the year, July:

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Nothing At All

Found this poem while I used the internet to deal with the recent death of my grandmother. She had been ill and in and out of the hospital for more than a year, so the news of her death was no surprise. Her health had been constantly deteriorating and her quality of life being extremely low. So, when my mother called me with the news I was glad that it was an end to her suffering. But, now I realize that even though I am glad that she isn’t in pain anymore, it doesn’t lessen the pain of the fact that she isn’t here anymore. Reading this poem gave me much needed comfort and wanted to share it here.

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Balance

When I was in school, we read poems regularly and analyzed what the poet meant with every line, word and punctuation. But after I left school I stopped reading poems actively because other things like Netflix lured me. I have picked it up again recently because I have found that it’s a way for me to slow down and be mesmerized by how beautifully emotion can be captured with words.

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