There was a period in my life when my future was filled with unlimited potential and possibilities. Life was something that was intriguing, exciting, and full of wonder. Every day, I couldn’t wait until I was old enough to “do that thing”, “be my own man”, or “fulfill my dreams”.

As I got older, life acquired a different taste. Somewhere along the line, it became less about possibility and dreaming, and more about stability and compromise. As I closed out my twenties, all I could think about was what I failed to accomplish in this regard.

I hadn’t gotten married by 21…

and then by 24…

and then 28…

and now, 30.

I never got to own my own studio by 25. I never became a wildly successful designer that people recognized off the street. I never got to work with Nike. I never got to work with my design heroes. I never got to buy my sick penthouse.

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It’s even sadder if I dive deeper to back when I was a pre-teen. I never became an astronaut. I never figured out time-travel. I never discovered a new planet. I never went to space. I never figured out how to clone myself so I could make my clone do all the things that I didn’t want to do in my life (cloning is hard, guys).

As a youth I was so fixated on accomplishing all these things by certain timelines — almost as if my life was operating on a ticking clock. Every day became less exciting and became more about shortened deadlines. By my mid-twenties, life had turned into one big task list. I couldn’t help but wonder: What had happened in my life so that compromise became the indicator for growth?

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I didn’t have a “freakout” when I turned 30. Friends, How I Met Your Mother, and other tv comedies from the 00’s told me that this was a significant change that I would feel, and that I would mourn the loss of my youth when it came around — but it did the opposite.

I came to accept the terms of life that I refused to sign-off on for the past two decades: Life isn’t a sprint. It’s a marathon and you’re the only one running it. From there on, it became about finding the right pace for me, and the perspective to match.

I had a massive checklist of things I wanted to get done by this time. I failed on all of them. But I’ve done so much more than that list could ever detail.

It’s interesting how we spend our entire lives planning things out, only to be constantly reminded that life doesn’t play by our rules. The sooner we accept that, the sooner we can experience these curveballs in a more joyful perspective — embracing change and the challenges that come along the way that aren’t necessarily “wrenches” in our plans, but alternate roads we never could have imagined ourselves.

My life looks nothing like what I imagined it to a year ago, much less 10 — and I’m sure yours does too.

And you know what? I think that’s what’s supposed to make life fun.