I just turned 44. It’s an age that would have scared the pants off my 25- or 30-year-old self. And it’s one that many of my much-younger colleagues can’t imagine: an architecture of relentless responsibility, a less animated and diverse life, seemingly endless appointments for my kids.

But it’s not scary. Scary, now, is the the call that someone you love has cancer, the email confirming you’ll be moving far away from family and friends, the deep sadness of a family undone by grief. But the accumulation of many messy, wonderful years? That’s comforting, not frightening.

I spent my twenties and thirties in perpetual motion. I was finding love, working until 8pm, running marathons, dancing on the bar at a now-defunct Cold War spy hangout in the 50th street subway station. Amid the mania, I had remarkably little faith that I would find the things I needed. But I did.

It wasn’t always pretty, and it still isn’t. Everyone I know is busy and tired. Not tired from the 5am bender, with the hot-iron hangover. Tired of the endless calibration of managing everything: How many minutes can you eke out in the office before the great sprint home? How many arguments over when to book the flights home for Christmas before you just accept that your husband will never share your need to endlessly plan? How many nights can you go out in a row before the kids rebel, in whatever subtle and fascinating way they find to let you know they need you? (answer: not many).

These (very) first-world frustrations are tempered by deep contentment. I figured out what I needed, and I made it happen.

Everything is harder now. It seems I endlessly track things: my parents, my kids (no, I don’t know where every sock and library book is), everyone’s calendars. Just getting out the door sometimes requires a level of mindfulness and self-control I simply do not possess. But I can take it. Life doesn’t overwhelm the way it used to.

I only wish I hadn’t been so anxious to see where the arc of my future would lead; that I would have had more confidence that I could bend it toward the life I wanted.

Here’s what I would tell my 30-year-old self: