Yesterday, I reached my 30th birthday. I guess this means I should be looking back at where I've come and ahead to where I'm going; I mean, 3 decades is a nice, even, round number to act as some important milestone, right?

Naa, that's just cliche, and birthdays to me are about as meaningful as the passage of another calendar year; an indication of time passing as opposed to some stepping stone on the path of life itself.

In the past few weeks, however, I have been thinking of some major changes. For my whole life I've lived pretty much out of a single room. Growing up I had my bedroom and small toy room. In college I had a dorm room and then university apartments which really mean a bedroom and a shared room. Later on, I continued that trend by basically living out of a bedroom for my first 5 years post-college.

For the past year, I've been living in my own apartment; 2 bedrooms, living room. This is a lot of space for me to expand into, especially after nearly 30 years of being pretty comforted by the confines of everything being close to me. And now I'm planning on how to expand into my second bedroom and living room, which means some temporary expenses for furniture and fixings. This past weekend I actually got pretty excited about it, as I finally had a plan.

To set the stage more, I spend a lot of time on my computers, particular my laptops. I have a gaming machine as my desktop system, but it is only used for gaming. I don't watch television, but I do watch a lot of movies and love having one running in the backround. Interestingly, I don't watch movies while gaming, since that is pretty distracting.

I don't have a desk and haven't had one for about 2 years now, mostly working on my computers on a couch, chair, or my bed. In fact, I've moved my television and main computer into my bedroom, making it the room I spend 95% or more of my time.

I've decided to reclaim the rest of my apartment. I'll start by getting a desk for my computers, which I will put in the second bedroom. This will be matched with a comfortable chair (I don't skimp!) since I'll still spend a lot of time in there. If I want to watch a movie, I have spare systems/laptops to play a DVD in them next to me.

In the living room, I'll be able to use wireless to stay on my laptops while also watching a movie or reading a book. I really have no need to game on my gaming machine in my living room, so I don't need it around.

Really, this is the best plan I've had in a long time as far as living conditions go. It sounds like a bit of a no-brainer, but really I've done nothing because I didn't know where I'd end up. I didn't want to buy things and spend money without the plan moving forward, and until now, I just wanted everything in one room and split myself up.

So, that's what turning 30 has brought me; a sense to expand my living conditions beyond living out of one room.