The BIG number

Yesterday I've joined the 30s club. THIRTY!!!
The number is too big and I feel like this time it actually has a meaning and it’s a big one. All the birthdays up until now were peaces of cake, insignificant in their sense. This one is an actual hit. I feel it in my bones and it’s scary. If you think of it, up to 20s – you are just a kid, in your mid 20s - you are still a kid but with your own money and a somewhat direction in life, you can still do whatever you want: work, travel, switch education – anything you want, because you’re only responsible for yourself. 
Whereas when you're hitting this mark, you start to feel a bit of panic taste that you didn’t know existed before. Questions like: “Am I doing everything right?”, “Where am I going in this life?”- constantly popping up in your head, whatever you do or wherever you go.
You also start to think about things you’ve never paid attention to before – your living conditions, how you spend your spare time (yep, sitting in front of TV seems like a waste of precious time now), you finances, etc. I also notice that I've started to appreciate nature and things created by nature more. If a stroll in a park used to be a drag, now it’s something you cherish and look forward to. Or gardening, working with earth, brings such pleasure and satisfaction that again, I didn't care for before.
I tell you, it’s a total new “YOU” when you turn 30. Adulthood is no longer an option: it’s a fact.
As for regrets, which seems to be an appropriate topic on a big B-day like this, they're less significant than what's been accomplished so far. For one, I never thought I'd be celebrating this milestone here, on this continent, in this great country, with the closest people that I've been very lucky to meet and reunite with.
Here are some amazing quotes that totally describe how I feel:

The only time you really live fully is from thirty to sixty. The young are slaves to dreams; the old - servants of regrets. Only the middle-aged have all their five senses in the keeping of their wits.
Anonymous

At the age of twenty, we don't care what the world thinks of us; at thirty, we worry about what it is thinking of us; at forty, we discover that it wasn't thinking of us at all.
Hervey Allen

Everything I know I learned after I was thirty.
Georges Clemenceau

And my favorite one:

Time and Tide wait for no man, but time always stands still for a woman of thirty.
Robert Frost