I think I hate my birthday!

More accurately, I hate fear the way my birthday makes me think about whether I have enough friends or enough fun or whether I am doing enough to celebrate, even if it’s not how I want to celebrate!

Like drinking a lot when I don’t actually enjoy how it makes me feel and

laughing at things that are not funny to me and

responding with so many exclamation points!!! to messages from people I no longer know.

Against my better judgement, this is somehow what I always type to others on their birthday:

“Have the best day!”

What I always mean:

“Have whatever day you are going to have!”

“and celebrate exactly and only how you want to!”

But also, maybe we should just do that every day that we can manage it???

Then maybe my birthday wouldn’t cause me so much AGGHHHHH!!

You know????

no no okay!

For my 23rd birthday, I received many beautifully thoughtful and intentional messages from those by whom I am lucky enough to be loved and also I did get quite a few of the

“Have the best day ever!”

messages but I know they didn’t mean it so I will not hold it against them AND ALSO I scoffed out loud when I received one note in particular which read simply, menacingly,

“Happy birthday! Are you happy?”

I responded, drunk with awe at the audacity, typing fast and fuming,

“Thank you! VERY!”

I meant, not-so-eloquently,

I mean, sometimes, right? Like sometimes I’m happy, sometimes I’m sad. Sometimes I’m angry and lonely and excited all at the same time. Sometimes I’m enchanted and disgusted, too. Aren’t you? Gosh I hope so.

Well then,

how am honoring the year past? How am I honoring the woman of yester-year? Am I leaving her roses or daisies? What kind of cake am I baking for her? What would she want for tomorrow’s Alex?

For my 23rd birthday, I started a self study that includes an archival exploration of my daily planner, which I use every day, like a grandmother would — like my grandmother does.

How am I honoring the woman I have been?

I am witnessing her, week to week, month to month, analyzing the themes and remembering what it was like to be her. My aim is to extend to her, fully and graciously, a little compassion and a lot of love and maybe even a little pride because

Time has a way of passing.

As I experience what it means to throw myself into something and some place altogether new and foreign, I am finding it far too easy to forget what it meant to be where I was, at once wanting to be exactly right here, where I am.

And perhaps I’m getting a bit redundant with that idea of getting present but trust me if it’s redundant for you to read, imagine, for a moment, what it feels like in my head! It’s like how I wake up on so many days and the sun is shining and I marvel,

“What a day,”

and it then starts raining and Goodness says to me,

“It should have been ‘what a morning,’ silly!”

“When will you learn?”

I’ll just keep going in circles around these lessons until their traces become tattoos.

For my 23rd birthday, I received some advice from some older than I, obviously wiser than I men who frequent my workplace. Two of them told me that their past selves knew they would be exactly where their present-selves are now. I told them I did not believe them when

I wanted to say I felt sorry for them.

They advised me that for my birthday, I should do something that puts me one step closer to becoming exactly who I want to be.

My heart translated their words: it is never too early and never too late to create the life you want to live.

Another of them; the town drunk whose death I thought I witnessed a few days back but not to worry, he lives to drink another quad shot Appleton’s on the rocks; told me that his one piece of advice to 23-year-old himself would be:

Keep your cock in your pants.

He followed that up with a rather contradictory,

I love my kids.

But who are we if not beautifully contradictory beings?

He did speak to my heart when he started going on about

kids these days

and

the paralysis of choice

and

just doing something that feeds your passion

it’s as simple as that I guess!

For my 23rd birthday, I was gifted a spiraling paranoia when I found out that my manager is one year younger than I am. I was handed, on a shiny silver platter, a grim realization in the form of a wretched question: am I doing the right thing? Being here, pelted by sideways rain on this patio, just having a yarn (to be pronounced “yawn,” with that high-reaching kiwi twang) with people who were strangers to me, and I to them, 4 months ago when I could be pinning up my Bachelor of Science, next to a desk, beside many someone else’s desks, near the break room and the printer, wearing out the Zara pants that are currently collecting dust in my wardrobe?

Am I doing the right thing?

And so,

naturally,

for my 23rd birthday, I registered to walk Te Araroa, “The Long Path,” a trail that runs the entire length of New Zealand and will take me somewhere around 4 months to complete. Which means that every day of my first 4 months of 2024, I will shit outside.

xx

Until You Know Better

Take the long way ’round 😉

Stop letting strangers touch your hair just because you don’t want to make them uncomfortable with rejection

Buttered sourdough

Affirmation: I trust that I will make my way to wherever I am going.

Continue writing like no one is watching, my love

*Switch off your notifications

Great Artists Steal

“Traveller” by Chris Stapleton on repeat!

My dear friend’s birthday message to me ended with, “you don’t owe anyone anything…” — hold close the people who know what you need to hear and tell you exactly whatever that is.

*Throughout his comedy special, The King’s Jester, Hasan Minhaj accurately portrays what it feels like to notice oneself getting hooked on likes, comments, retweets, etc., cackling as he gets his fix — it feels good to feel seen, even if it’s fake.