My sisters turn 30 tomorrow. Happy Birthday, Amy and Laura!

I think 30 has been my best birthday so far -- it was freeing, somehow. I just got to the point where I didn't feel the need to contort myself to fit other people's expectations -- or the goals I'd imposed on myself to meet other people's expectations. You know, "I'm going to be a world-famous, Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist by the time I'm 30!" Well, I turned 30, and that hadn't happened and... so what? I still liked my life. I bought a house --not something that had been on my radar when I was making those globe-trotting foreign correspondent plans -- and had great friends and liked my job and... hell, I was actually pretty happy.

Plus, at 30, I felt like I had reached the point where I didn't have to pretend anymore. I'm supposed to like football. But, well, I don't. So to hell with it. I'm supposed to be fashionable. Eh, screw it -- I've never been that bothered (and my experiments at perms and such were disastrous), so why bother? I'm supposed to be madly ambitious -- but why? And does that really make me happy? If not, never mind. I'm supposed to be making buckets of money. Yeah, but the jobs that paid the best made me the most miserable, which prompted me to spend said money on stupid things. What's the point of that?

So Amy and Laura, I hope 30 is is good for you as it was for me. Happy Birthday!

(Not that you read this. Darrin, Jorge -- maybe you can tell them that I said hi.)