All the quotes I saved this year
and thoughts on turning 30
Every year on my birthday, (which is September 9th if you’re wondering! I’m told it’s the most common date to be born, so happy birthday to all my fellow average joes!) I open a new Notes page on my phone to start recording quotes. They could be quotes from others, revelations formed in my own brain, though undoubtedly from the influence of inspirational people in my life, passages from books, snippets from movies, podcasts, articles, songs. Anything!
I have long felt finicky about sharing online, like there’s an innate protective instinct to keep things surface-level and safe. Some social media personalities are open book, happily disclosing intimate details of their personal lives. Others have specific, compartmentalized branding. To each her own. Fortunately there’s no hard and fast rule you have to choose and stick to. It’s all pretty experimental for me.
As I fast approach my 30th birthday, I’ve felt a shift toward wanting to be more vulnerable with my content in the hopes that I can connect with others. Not vulnerable in the sense of documenting every second with my kids and displaying it for the world, but just being more forthright about where I started and where I’m hoping to go. It’s compelling to want to be an overnight success story. How my young self would yearn to seem alluring and enigmatic and mysterious. When I say “young self,” I’m referring to me three weeks ago. Oh, the mountains we’ve climbed since then! I’ve canceled subscriptions I didn’t know I started! I’ve changed 9,000 diapers! I’ve done at least 12 batches of laundry! Sometimes I even manage to wash, dry, fold and put away TWO hampers in one day. If being proud of that isn’t thirty then I don’t know what is.
I feel inexorable relief when I imagine this coming year, knowing I have the opportunity to scrap some tightly held inhibitions. People don’t care as much as I thought they did. Hell, I don’t care as much as I thought I did. Nobody is thinking about you as much as you are, and I mean that in the sweetest way possible (actually, God is, but we love that about Him). Consider this a PSA that I am cracking open my book because every time I have, I’ve made more friends and nourished better relationships.
I’ve always loved sailing as an analogy. Catch the breeze when it’s blowing. Open your sails. Tack. Adjust. Cruise. Have I ever sailed before? Nothing bigger than a Sunfish, but conceptually, I think that counts (if you actually sail real boats, you likely disagree and I support you for that). Whatever the size of your vessel, you’re probably not concerned about what’s beyond the horizon, just focused on the skies above and sea below. I mostly think in jokes, but occasionally I like well-placed poetic metaphors and a touch of melodrama. I’m experiencing an unbuttoning-of-the-jeans-like exhale, unlatching the hatches, meditating on current conditions, poised to float whatever the weather.
In the spirit of sharing, here’s my journey in quotes as a 29 year old. I always read them on or around my birthday the following year. What a journey a year can be, even when a lot of it was spent coaxing kids into clothes and wiping milk off the floor!
29
9/13/23
Generosity of spirit. Habits. You can get better at anything. We are happier when we’re busy. What’s the most amount of fun you could have in one year. Pray.
10/2/23
It’s all an experiment. For goodness sake, keep going. Make it fun. Everything you do increases your confidence in your own abilities. We are happier when we’re busy. God cares about it.
10/4/23
Give yourself permission to be happy now. You can’t wait for life to stop being hard to start living. Everything else is a bonus.
Don’t limit yourself. What’s the most amount of fun you can have in a year? Stay zoomed in. You can do hard things. Thank you, Lord, for bringing me closer to you through this experience.
10/5/23
Fake it til you make it! I can’t do everything but I can do one thing.
10/7/23
Give yourself time with a newborn. I am feeling so much better on day 7! Rest the first several days and know that you will feel more normal after just a week🫶🏼
11/24/23
Winnie is sleeping so well! Babies will get on a schedule eventually. Winnie did a long stretch right around 6 weeks. It just took a couple nights of pushing him to 5am for him to consistently get it.
11/24/23
“If you want something, you can’t take it. You have to let someone give it to you.” -The Bullet That Missed (Richard Osman)
12/19/23
Adopt your identities
Problem-solver
1/11/24
New year mantras -
Make it fun
Be brave
Open heart
The year of dance
1/11/24
Big is the same as small. There’s just more of it. -The Thursday Murder Club
1/11/24
"It is not enough that we do our best; sometimes we must do what is required."-Winston Churchill
1/18/24
“Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it's a feather bed." -Terence McKenna
"There is no win and no fail. There is only make." -Corita Kent
1/19/24
“Build better habits, don’t chase better results.” -James Clear
"If you accomplish something good with hard work, the labor passes quickly, but the good endures; if you do something shameful in pursuit of pleasure, the pleasure passes quickly, but the shame endures." -Musonius Rufus
Who are you trying to become this year? Which actions will reinforce that identity? -A screen actor. A creator. An open-hearted, curious, fun, full-of-life wife and mom. Someone unabashed and faithful.
1/21/24
Let your mind wander. Let it go.
1/28/24
If you don’t cry sometimes, you’ll end up crying all the time -The Thursday Murder Club (Joyce)
2/20/24
"Your job, throughout your entire life, is to disappoint as many people as it takes to avoid disappointing yourself." -Glennon Doyle
“Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that's almost never the case.” -Chuck Close
2/21/24
"Do things for your own satisfaction. Consider praise from others to be a bonus. If you don't work for their validation in the first place, you won't need it to feel satisfied once it's done." -James Clear
“He or she who finds her life must first lose it.-Jesus
3/7/24
"Inspiration is merely the reward for working every day." -Charles Baudelaire
3/20/24
“The unknown is the foundry where you forge your chips. Everything important is uncertain..” -Eliot Peper
Life mirrors faith!
3/27/24
"Figure out what you're good at without trying, then try." Isabel
4/5/24
“I've made it a principle not to be over-influenced by minor disappointments."
-Marianne Moore
4/25/24
“Habit is necessary; but it is the habit of having careless habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive... one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways." -Edith Wharton
5/7/24
Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of consistency
6/3/24
“…your aperture broadens when you’re under the spell of your own brand of creative genius. Your confidence is greater, your risk threshold higher. The definition of what defines “you” according to you feels more amorphous, like there’s less ego attached to it, than in times when you’re searching and searching. The lulls between the strikes come with a bit of rigidity” -Leandra Medine Cohen
“Always strive to give value before you ask for value.”-James Clear
6/12/24
"I am always doing what I can't do yet in order to learn how to do it." -Vincent Van Gough
6/20/24
“You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from."-Cormac McCarthy
7/3/24
“Weird but true: If you continually give, you will continually have.
The highest form of wealth is deciding you have enough.” -Kate Strickler?
7/11/24
Whatever it is He has started in your life, He will see it through
8/14/24
There are two rules to misogi: One is that your misogi task has to be really hard. And two is don’t die. It’s all an experiment
8/28/24
"Plant the seeds of greatness in your mind.”-James Clear
"Do bold things with a pleasant and friendly demeanor.”-JC
"Even if you don't have all the things you want, be grateful for the things you don't have that you don't want.”- Bob Dylan
Which activities are the best expression of you? Can you spend five minutes doing one of them today?-JC
As ever, THANK YOU for reading!!
Hug,
Alli
Alli,
You are so much wiser than I was at your age - which was quite some years ago. I admit this with much admiration and just a wee bit of envy. I love your sweet little family.