Fire

The other day I went to The Clay Room in the Danforth on my day off and I spent hours there painting ceramics. One is a teapot that'll go to my mother-in-law, who we'll be spending Christmas eve with, and the others were a set of coffee mugs for the Dude and I, which I envision us sipping out of together on lazy Sundays.

Not this Sunday, though. That be Christmas. And holy gods in the trees, how is this possible? I feel like more and more my life is speeding up and time is moving faster than I'm actually aging. But no. I'm 29. In less than a year I'll be 30 and to be honest, I'm not where I thought I'd be.

Not that I'm in a bad place. But when you choose to live in Toronto and will not move, this almost necessarily means entering into real estate is a scarier and more difficult venture than in other towns and cities. I mean, you can buy a real dive with two bedrooms in a crummy neighbourhood in this city for $300,000. Awesome. So yeah, we're not going to be in the market for home ownership for a couple years.

Then there's parenthood. I don't really have the luxury of surplus time anymore. I don't want to wait till I'm 35 only to discover I have fertility issues that can no longer be easily resolved due to advanced age. Being cheated out of motherhood would break my heart. Now is the time I have to start planning the real deal. I have to save monies (On top of home down payment monies) for a year's worth of mat leave.

I also want to do some creative projects. I've been getting my feet wet, but I can't be passive about this. I don't want to get older and older with no finished works.

Sometimes when I see 21-year-olds I get envious. Just seeing all the potential and little responsibility and all the years of easygoing times ahead makes me wistful. Not that I'd go back, but I did have fun and my mid 20s were in particular very enjoyable. I remember my boss at my internship when I was 21 telling me, "The world is your oyster." Little cliche statements like that start ringing a lot more true when you look back and analyze the choices you made. I think I did okay. But I could do a lot more.

Something about turning 29 has putting something of a fire under my ass. I really feel like I need to be... more.