Around this time last year, I was convinced that I had gone through my Saturn return. You know the one: that much-written about, famously transformational time in a person’s life when the planet Saturn returns to the position it occupied at the time of your birth. It’s supposed to take place every 29.5 years and bring significant changes. After a summer that included a professional spiral and a romantic quasi-relationship that started as swiftly and passionately as it ended, I thought mine had come and gone already. I thought.

Well, think again, I told myself about a month and a half ago, a week before I turned 30. I was on my fifth consecutive late-night stroll—the 20,000-step kind of walk that, as one friend put it, one embarks on with the noble mission of untying the knots in one’s life. Yet with every walk, I found that I had even more questions.

Could it be, I wondered, that I was just spiraling—or “crashing out,” as the kids say these days—about turning 30?

I’ve never especially minded getting older, but my 30s in particular long seemed full of promise: bigger paychecks, better boyfriends, closer friends—quality over quantity. And besides, at 29 I considered myself professionally established (to say “successful” would be to risk jinxing it). I had good, great friends. My parents were healthy, even if far away in my home country. I was single—I’ve been single—but that’s never felt like a big deal. In brief, I didn’t have much to be anxious about.

But I was anxious. After relocating to the United States for university, I’d spent most of my 20s embracing the very Millennial grind mentality and working a job plus a side gig plus a passion project, fixated on the person I’d become. Things worked out, and I’ve always been proud of my work ethic, but this summer I realized that I had burned myself out.

Suddenly, who I am—and the life I want to build for myself—outside of work has become a priority. I no longer have the appetite to just hustle. My dad used to tell me that life was a marathon, not a sprint—and I thought I had a grip on that idea. Now I actually do.