Your Daily Dose of Joy

We’re now less than a week away from my 30th birthday, and since writing lists seems to be the done thing in advance of a major age milestones, I contributed to the trend.

So, if you care, here are some things I’ve learned in the last 30 years:

• There will be times in your life when you need to break up with your boyfriend, cut off all of your hair and move across the country. And while you’re in the thick of these things you’ll feel overwhelmed and crazy. You’ll feel out of control. But when you look back, years later, you’ll realize that you were just following some really smart inner voice.
• Always listen to that voice.
• Your hair will grow back. 
• It’s okay to spend a sunny summer day inside watching the DVDs of the West Wing for the fourteenth time.
• Just don’t do that on every summer day.
• Your mother is probably right.
• That doesn’t mean you should listen to her.
• If you’re checking work emails on Chrismukkah morning while your family is opening presents, you’re doing it wrong.
• Before publishing anything on the Internet, ask yourself, “would I be okay if a current or future employer/future partner/partner’s family saw this?”
• Because they will see it. They will totally see it. 
• Don’t spend more money than you have.
• Don’t put unflattering photos of your friends on the Internet.
• It is better to never get married than to marry the wrong person.
• Do not have sex with the following people: A friend of your parents, that totally age-inappropriate fry cook working at the lobster shack, your boss, your college professor, someone who is married (to a person that is not you), your best friend’s ex, your ex.
• On second thought, it’s okay to sleep with that totally age-inappropriate fry cook working at the lobster shack. As long as you’re in college (or just out of college) and as long as it’s just for a summer.
• Wear tall shoes when going drinking, so that if you fall down you can blame the shoes and not the level of alcohol you’ve consumed.
• If you can’t have an honest and open conversation with the person you’re sleeping with about contraception, you’re sleeping with the wrong person.
• People who judge you because they don’t like the things you like are assholes.
• Don’t say “no” to something without first trying it. Unless that something is vagazzling.
• Always say no to vagazzling.
• ‘If you ever want to procreate, don’t let your friends go into too many details about what giving birth is like.
• If you ever want to procreate, don’t let your doctor boyfriend go into too many details about what watching birth is like. Related: Don’t ever let him describe a forth degree tear.
• It’s a lot easier to lose the weight when you’re 24 than when you’re 29.
• Approximately one week before your 30^th birthday, getting carded when buying alcohol will stop being an inconvenience and start being a compliment. 
• When you get the urge to jump a fence into a private pool because it’s the last week of your 20s and you’ve never jumped a fence before and you can’t jump fences in your 30s and so you decide to carpe diem and jump the fence, don’t.
• Seriously, don’t.