Do you only technically turn a year older at midnight in the time-zone where you where born? So, if you’re born in London but live in New York should you officially celebrate your birthday at 7pm the day before your date of birth?

The thought only occurred to me today. Today, for the first time in my now 28 years I opened my eyes in the same time zone where I opened my eyes for the very first time. It’s possible that this is the most official birthday I’ve had since that very first one…which adds another milestone to the long list I’ve racked up since this same day last year .

Every year on my birthday I go back through this blog’s archive and re-read the August 7th posts I’ve written. It’s a bizarre trip down my public memory lane. Every year I go in thinking I’ll read what that ridiculous 25-year-old wrote and laugh at how clueless she was, but every year I come to the somewhat calming realization that I write the same thing every time:

At 25: What’s Your Scary Age? 25 though still holds a certain weight in my head – like this marker of actual adulthood signifying the end of getting away with blatant immaturity (in public). I feel like at 25 I have to sit myself down and say, “Okay, where are we are? Oats, sewn; money, squandered; gateway drugs, tried; slippery sloap through gateway, avoided; and metaphoric notches in (twin) bedposts, carved. Good work, now stop blacking out and start saving money.” It’s like from here on out I don’t have to move forward in one, focused direction, but I can’t blatantly move backward. I’ve made some solid ground and lived a life of which 80% could be shared with my parents; now my life’s purpose is to not fuck it up. 25, the year I do as I say and not as I want.

At 26: Mom, Me and Choice – We are the sum of our choices – trite but true – from as early on as we understand the concept of choice. But I think we sometimes forget that in choosing one thing, we’re also choosing not another. This isn’t an argument against having “it all” (there’s no argument, you can’t — but that’s for another day). This is just a newly 26-year-old woman (who still feels like she should be referred to as “girl”) realizing what she loves about her life but what she could and might soon leave behind now that with each passing year the future changes focus.

At 27: Precisely What’s So Scary About My Scary Age – I want to have that pressure of feeling like there are items to check off in my 20s. I’m excited about drawing lines in the sand and pacing to meet them. The whole idea of the gravity of this point in life is exhilarating. It’s not my scary age because I suspect I’ll find my first grey hair before I turn 2-8. It was never about that. It’s about the fact that the number 2-7- and where it falls in the scheme of life charges me with a motivation to commit to my passions and dive at the risks that requires.

(There are many things I am not, but painfully self aware isn’t one of them.)

And now at 28:

I’ve been thinking a lot about who I am versus where I am and where I’ve been – circumstance versus self, if you will. This week – as if in preparation for this very post-writing purge – I had a mini break down about the degree to which my circumstances (long, exhausting hours at a job in my marketing/branding career) are preventing me from reaching my true goals (a side or fully sustainable career as a writer). I live 3,000 miles from my family to pursue those goals. I moved away from my very best friends to make them a reality. I sacrifice social life and personal time to write when I’m not at work. My circumstances affect my every day.

But I think part of being a mature person with their eyes squarely set on the prize has to do with not letting your circumstances bleed into your self. My circumstances are frustrating; my self remains hopeful. My circumstances have taken me very far from home; my self remains a fast-paced New Yorker with her family and friends on speed-dial. My circumstances make diving into a social life in L.A. harder because my time is so crunched; my self knows when to close the laptop and go to Wednesday night trivia with the gang.

When I look back at what I aimed to accomplished from 2-7 to 2-8 I see reason to be frustrated. I wanted to write more, produce more, network more. But what I all-too-often forget is that progress in your circumstance is one thing – your title, your salary, your number of books published. Progress in your self is something very different.

I moved clear across the country. I started a new job in a very different part of world I’d worked in prior. I learned the ins and outs of the industry I’ve always aspired to join. I now know what steps I need and want to take for at leas the next few years. And I met the guy with whom I’ve had the most meaningful relationship of my life.

As I read back on that list it looks far more meaningful than selling a script or staging a play. And it looks like all the elements of that self and her life at 28 is what I need to either change my circumstances to better match my dreams or deal with whatever circumstances I meet along the path to making the come true.

Either way, I’m happy, grateful, and lucky at 28 years old. Today I will have a gigantic, Mexican brunch with my L.A. family and a romantic, seafood dinner with R.

Tomorrow I will re-read this post, laugh at how deep I get after one bloody mary, and start freaking out about the fact that 30 is only two blog posts away…