Battling the 30s

My understanding was that at each milestone birthday a person should sit back and reflect on times past, and ultimately realize that they are growing old - very old. And so, when I turned 30, of course I started to feel the weight of years long-since-past press upon me. The youth of my 20s was behind me, I had entered the decade of corporate climbing, mortgages, and child bearing. It didn't help of course that I was surrounded by 22 year olds at work, and that the "really old people" in the office were only 34. I had resigned myself to the fact that I was no longer young. (I do appreciate that if I think 30 is old, then what about 40, and I can't even imagine 80 at this point).

And then I moved to America .....

I'm not sure what happened, but all of a sudden, I am having a "young" crisis. People everywhere seem to think that I am almost a decade younger than I actually am.

Yes - I got carded at the Cheesecake Factory. I know, seriously - the Cheesecake Factory. And even though I recognize that the legal drinking age is 21 in the US, I'm a good decade above that. In shock, I reached for my id slack-jawed, muttering "but I'm old?!?!?"

And this comes on the heels of a couple of recent client experiences of a similar nature. I recently mentioned to a client that I had played on an ultimate frisbee team - to which the client (with the same name as me) retorted "Why you're just like a younger version of me!" To which I responded - "what do you mean younger?" because from my impression we were the same age (in fact I might be a year or two older than her). "How old do you think I am?" I asked. 24. Yes. She thought I was 24. Appauled, I gasped and blurted out "I'm 31!" At which my whole team was shocked - apparently they too thought I was more like 25-26. Seriously? And then another client just last week asked me and my much younger counter-part if we would ever consider doing an MBA in the future. At which point, I had to tell her about my years building the space station, my gluttony for collecting degrees, and that I had finished my MBA two years ago. (Now of course she is probably 50-ish, so I felt a little better that she saw me as "younger")

But all this to say, it is giving me a weird complex. Some have said it's my positive-Canadian attitude that makes me younger, but I don't really know what to think. I should love it - because what woman doesn't want to be told she looks years younger. But the 30s is an awkward time in a career where you're trying to establish yourself and climb the corporate ladder, and that's difficult if everyone thinks 21 (or 24!) I know I'm probably not gaining a lot of sympathy on this one, but it's weird and unsettling. And frankly, if I'm going to be 24 again, I want a cooler wardrobe!