What a pointless age. 33? What is that? There’s no significance to it. It’s not like 30, or 35, or even, God forbid, 40.
It’s 33.
It’s pointless.
I hate pointless age birthdays even more than regular birthdays, though honestly, pretty much every age has been pointless since 21.
As you can see, so far my birthday hasn’t been an especially joyous one, though that should hardly come as any surprise to anyone.
I figured on spending the day looking back, taking stock, and evaluating my life, as birthdays do tend to be a convenient time to do that sort of thing…but hen I said, “Screw it.”
What would be the point, really? Basically I’d just look back, think about a handful of happy memories, dwell on a thousand bad ones, and ultimately become convinced that my life has largely been a pointless waste of time and feel sort of depressed.
This might not be so bad…if it served as some sort of impetus for making changes in my life to make it less of a pointless waste of time in the future.
However, I’ve been doing this sort of thing on my birthday for at least ten years, and so far that hasn’t happened. I look back, feel bad, resolve to change things and make them better, then go to bed at the end of the day and wake up the next day remaining substantially the same person I was before, with my resolve to change things fading like an unremembered dream.
So this year I decided to skip as much of that as possible.
That means that I’ll probably still feel bad about myself, but I won’t make any resolutions to change, and I’ll spend as little time thinking about the past as possible.
After all, the present is depressing enough without having to dredge up the past…
Okay, so I’m mostly kidding about the depression, but while I’m not exactly sitting here applying blade to wrist while swallowing a bunch of pills, the fact remains that I’m in my thirties, single, having a pointless birthday that brings me that much closer to forty, as is pretty typical, at least wihin the last ten years, I’m spending it alone, and I realize that pretty much all of the hopes and expectations I once had for life have gone largely unfulfilled.
These things don’t exactly spell “party” for me.
And even if they did...well, “party” really isn’t in my vocabulary anymore. Even after having adapted to a life of sobriety, I remain unconvinced that it’s possible to go out and have a really wild and reckless night of alcohol-free abandon.
How can you really say you had fun if you can actually remember it the next day?
Last year I held a birthday party for myself. I did it largely to forestall anyone at work trying to take me out for my birthday. Throwing my own party allowed me to appease whatever urge they might have to do something for me while at the same time maintaining a certain degree of control over the proceedings.
I think we all had a very nice time. There was plenty of food, I got some cool gifts, and basically it was a nice, quiet way to acknowledge the passing of another year with a small group of friends.
So yeah, it was nice.
But honestly, how well do you think the memory of a quiet, sedate, mature 32nd birthday stacks up against the blurry memories of a 27th birthday when I probably came extremely close to dying of alcohol poisoning?
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying that I want to go back to, or even anywhere near that life again, I’m just…well, I’m not sure that I know what “I’m just.”
The point is that on my birthday there’s very little I could do to celebrate it, even if I were of a mind to do so, which I really am not, as there is so little I could do to celebrate it even if I were, which I really am not because...well, you get the idea.
When I talked to them earlier today my parents had both suggested “treating myself” to dinner.
…
As uncomfortable as I feel going out into the world, where the fact that I’m flying solo makes me stick out like a sore thumb, I can’t help but think that it’d be even worse on my birthday.
So it really wouldn’t be much of a treat.
Still, I do have to eat, and don’t feel like cooking, so I may actually head over to the too-bright Italian place across the street. I haven’t decided on that one yet, especially since I will be going out on Monday night as part of a birthday celebration.
As for doing anything else to celebrate…with alcoholic binges removed from the list of possibilities, there really aren’t a lot of options. I could go out and buy myself something, but that would involve taking money out of my savings, and honestly, what I’m trying to do as a “birthday present” for myself is bulk up my savings as much as possible.
To be honest, I had actually made use of my planner and my newly-acquired time management skills to plan the day. Despite the fact that the phone calls I got and made this morning didn’t entirely follow the schedule I’d set up for them, I was actually on schedule for a while, and am back on it now (4 – 5 was set aside for writing a Threshold entry), I didn’t stick to it much after I got back from my walk (from 12 – 1).
In fact, I threw it entirely out the window by taking a nap.
Yeah, that’s right. I celebrated my 33rd birthday by taking a nap.
Who says I don’t know how to party anymore?
During the block of mid-day in which I was sleeping I was supposed to be writing, writing something other than and independent of Threshold.
What would that be? I don’t know; the point was just to begin devoting time to writing.
Why? Well, I’m hoping that if I keep telling myself the same thing over and over again I might actually start to believe that it really is my dream to be a writer. It would be much easier to convince myself of that if I were actually doing some writing with all of the time available to me.
So that’s more or less the plan I’ve been trying to lay out.
Admittedly, it didn’t work out too well today, but hey, it’s my birthday. If I can’t change my mind and decide to take a nap today, when can I?
In any case, we’re nearing the end of the hour I set aside for this entry, so if I’m going to get back on schedule, I’d better wrap things up.
In closing, there are only two things that I take comfort in about being 33: Kathleen will be going through the same thing in eleven days, and my brother Brad will be taking another step towards 50 in two days.
I may or may not be back with more later, as tonight is my big TV night (new episodes of “Smallville,” finally), and if I am, I should actually have a new picture for everyone’s viewing pleasure (assuming I find time to finish it, as drawing it wasn’t written into the day’s plan…).
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