I Thought I'd Be Somewhere Else By Now

(maraca shakes) (mouse clicks) (soft ethereal music) Headspace Studios. (soft ethereal music) Hey, friends, it's Rosie here. Welcome back to "Radio Headspace." When I was younger, I had a very clear vision of what I wanted my life to look like by the time I turned 30. I was gonna be married, I was gonna have children. There would probably be a small but charming house, maybe with a lemon tree in the yard. It wasn't even something I consciously obsessed over. It was just the blueprint I'd absorbed from culture, from movies, from the quiet assumptions that float around us when we're in our 20s. 30 felt like a milestone, a marker, a checkpoint where adulthood would officially begin. And then 30 came and went. Now I'm 42. I don't have children, Torry and I are not married. And the funny thing is: at some point, that stopped feeling like a failure and started feeling like a choice. I kind of like having a boyfriend. I like the lightness of it. I like that we choose each other every year without a legal document forcing us to. But getting here wasn't linear. There were moments in my 30s when I felt that quiet ache: weddings I attended, baby showers I smiled through, late-night thoughts where I wondered if I had somehow missed the train everyone else seemed to board on time. Disappointment is tricky like that. It doesn't always show up as devastation. Sometimes it's just the quiet realization that the story you imagined for yourself didn't unfold the way you expected. And when something you dreamed about doesn't come true, the question that rises is not just: what happened? It's: what does that mean about me? Did I choose wrong? Did I wait too long? Did I fail at something everyone else figured out? We attach so much meaning to timelines. We believe that if life doesn't follow the script, something must be off. So here's what I've learned: plans are helpful, but they are not prophecies. When I look back at the version of me who imagined 30 as a finish line, I see someone who wanted certainty: marriage, children, milestones. They felt like proof that life was stable and on track. They felt like a rival. There's a metaphor I've come to love. It's called spiritual fishing. When you fish, you don't command the water. You don't demand the fish. You sit, you wait. You pay attention to the subtle movement beneath the surface. Sometimes you catch something, sometimes you don't. But the waiting itself teaches you something. Disappointment often feels like coming home empty-handed. You went out expecting a specific result, and instead you're holding space. But that doesn't mean the day was wasted. There were seasons when I had to sit with the ambiguity of my own life. I had to sit to allow the question, what if this isn't what I thought? to hang in the air without rushing to fix it. And something...