I’m sort of ambivalent about my birthday. not the age thing so much — I’ve had enough friends and co-workers in my life who wig out about their age that now I find that attitude bores me.
just the whole thing of having a day that’s ostensibly to celebrate oneself. I’m shy, but oh how I want the attention. but oh how I hate the attention.
on top of that, I had a long string of very bad birthdays that began with my 19th, 10 years ago. (surprise party, which might’ve been a good thing, except that the most-wanted guest never showed, and that started off a chain of events which is part of why the “hell house” was called such.) and two years ago, an already fairly dismal birthday (my mood, mostly; no real good reason) was followed by, well, Sept. 11.
this year I’m being low-key, and it’s treating me well. no party, a nice dinner, a little shopping. and I was pleasantly surpised by two bouquets of flowers from co-workers; the one from my assistant included an absolutely perfect card. (it cracks me up that she wrote out markup around her greeting, even more so that when I said “maybe this paragraph with a bold should be an h2,” she said that she thought I’d say that.)
I treated myself to a mocha this morning, too, and the burst of caffeine fired up some good programming & writing ideas.
so, yay me.