The game of life

When you are younger you are asked quite often what you want to be when you grow up, a firefighter, a ballerina, a movie star?  Games like M.A.S.H and Life are built around the idea that when you grow up you have certain things, a job, a spouse, children, and if you were like me if you didn't end up living in a mansion with your car filled with children then you just started the game over.  Hidden behind those innocent childhood games are strong messages to get a career, marry, and have children and then you will be happy and you will officially be "grown-up".  As I rocket toward my 30th birthday I look around and I realize I have none of those things.  Yes I am technically employed, but one thing that I missed on career day was that a) its a lot harder to become a movie star then I believed, and b) having a job and having a career are two separate kettle of fish.  I am not married.  Not only am I not married but I am closer to becoming the next Pope then I am to walking down the isle in a white dress.  I don't have any children, and while I think of my cats as my children, I don't have the "Sunday walks in the park pushing a baby buggy" type of children.  In my mid twenties I had a sort of mid-twenties-crisis over these 3 facts.  I fully expected to be 25, married, children, house with a white picket fence, etc.  That is what a 16 year old girl always dreams of, to have the full package, and we are taught that without these said items we weren't part of an elusive club of "normal" grown ups.  I admit that I have made some horrible relationship and life choices because of this pressure to marry and have children.  Hell there was a time when I would have married anything (and I did) with a pulse to fill that mold that I had been dreaming of since adolescence.  So many painful and expensive mistakes just to force myself and my life to be something that I now realize is nothing I want.  I mean sure I would love to meet someone some day that I could see myself spending some years with, and who knows if I ever meet someone that displays any kind of responsibility to someone other then themselves sure I might want to multiply with that person, who knows.  The bottom line is I don't have to.  I don't have to get married, I don't have to have children, and I don't have to be a movie star or an astronaut in order to be "successful".  As I have mentioned before turning 30 was a scary (and is still sort of scary) idea for me.  A lot of that I think had to do with a feeling of leaving my 20's unfulfilled, unaccomplished, with little more under my belt then "I survived my 20's and all I got was this lousy shirt".  Thinking about it though, I think I have accomplished a lot more by refusing to succumb to the life standards put before me during my Jr. High and High School years.  I did not marry the first man in my sights and start procreating like a rabbit on steroids in a desperate attempt to build the perfect dream life.  I made it through the gauntlet of my 20s...well 68 days...again who's counting ;) and I made it through college, kept myself employed and in good tax paying standing with the government (gold star much?....ahem) I have a great home and 2 cats that drive me insane but who I can't imagine having to live without, I have a sister and brother and a close knit group of friends that I wouldn't trade all of the tea in China for.  If I was playing a game of Life I would be losing....but I am playing my game of life...and clearly I appear to be winning.