Made-up milestones: the pressures of turning 30 from someone pushing 40

Eight years after founding Zetteler, Sabine Zetteler talks about timelines, milestones and expectations...

Zetteler is eight years old today. Naturally, I get reflective at this time of year, and I find myself looking back over our story so far, thinking about the various milestones we use to chart both our lives and the timelines of our business, and what they mean – if they mean anything at all.

The beginnings of the company coincided, more or less, with my turning 30. For most people today, 30 seems to be the milestone age in your professional life – the moment your career is set in stone, your achievements logged, when you can be judged a success or a failure in life. Magazines in just about every industry run ‘30 under 30’ features, the implication being that these people are the future and if you didn’t make the list, you’re set for the scrapheap.

Society conspires to convince us that round numbers somehow matter more, that they are lines in the sand, that at those threshold moments the world takes a snapshot of your life, weighs you, judges you, and often finds you wanting. It can feel as though, once you pass 30, if you don’t have the spouse, the house, the kids and the career, you’ve failed.

Now I’m nudging 40, let me tell you that’s all bullshit.

Recently I was talking with someone on the cusp of turning 30; someone I had an enormous amount of respect for, who, in my eyes, has achieved some great things, is healthy, motivated and well-loved by all who know her. And yet she felt like she hadn’t done enough, that if she wasn’t a success now, she possibly never would be.

I tried to steer her towards all the amazing elements of her life and achievements that I could see clearly, but which, for her, had become overshadowed by the imaginary milestone looming before her. I don’t know whether I succeeded in convincing her – today, the social pressures to have your life in order and your ambitions ticked off by the end of your third decade are incredibly intense. I found myself wondering whether I’d felt the same pressures eight years ago and concluded that, although the weight of a new decade (arbitrary though it is) is always heavy, and the compulsion to compare oneself with others is natural and ever-present, there was a significant societal difference between the time I turned 30, and today, as my friend does.

The generation turning 30 now has lived with the internet since puberty and social media since adulthood. They are faced with millions of other people to compare themselves to every day. Seemingly impossible standards of beauty are celebrated. The achievements of others are amplified around the echo chambers of the internet. A new international army of influencers model perfect lives, skin, bodies, ethics, fashion choices, careers, and creative achievements. Faced with this, it’s hard not to feel inadequate. And now in the age of Covid, when more of our lives are lived digitally, the grip of social media is tighter than ever.

My friends and I feel extraordinarily lucky that dial-up internet barely existed before we turned 18, that our social media experience at university was limited to MySpace profiles that most of us only half-bothered to update as MySpace was, frankly, a bit crap. Facebook launched when I was 27, but I didn’t have a smartphone to engage with it on until I was 30. I really believe that this had a massive impact on my sense of self-worth, that it made turning 30 feel much less like the end of the book and more like the beginning of a new chapter.

I am grateful that I didn't feel the eyes and expectations of society so acutely as I left my 20s, but the truth is that, in my 30s, they're everywhere and they're relentless. Running a small but rapidly growing business as a woman can often mean being ignored in meetings full of men. Not wanting to make my own children means I’m characterised as someone who will never access the true meaning of life. Not recognising the relevance of marriage (aside from a bangin' party) means my romantic commitments are forever in question. Not reaching the stage where buying a house somewhere I actually want to live seems viable means we’re schooled relentlessly on our lack of financial acumen. This decade has been the first time I've felt the need to protect and defend myself from prodding, probing and patronising dissection of my life decisions to date. Luckily I have a library of insightful books to turn to and a clinical psychologist for a sister, so I can arm myself with the widest possible perspective, and power on to 40.

Looking to learn from others, without comparing oneself to them, is empowering, once you learn how to do it (I’m not 100% there yet). It lifts the weight of expectation off your shoulders, wherever it comes from social media, family or tradition in general. Earlier this week, we had a great conversation with Peter Macfadyen, founder of Flatpack Democracy, and someone who gives approximately zero shits about what society expects of him. He shared a quote mid-monologue: “Tradition is peer pressure from the dead”, which I am definitely going to crack out at every opportunity to anyone suggesting that I should have a kid, get married or buy a house by such and such an age, or that I should define my successes not by what I’ve done, but when I’ve done it.

To me, success is when you wake up with a purpose beyond growing your possessions, or elevating your social status. If you have friends who would be there in a heartbeat for you, as you would for them, that's success. If you can make ends meet by whatever means are accessible to you, that's success. If you laugh a lot, if you look out for strangers, and if you’re mastering the art of sleep, that’s success. There’s no denying this combination is hard to achieve and it's a lifelong journey to get there, but if we can all focus on those basics, we can all be successful – or even better, happy – whatever age we are. These are the milestones that matter.