Thirty-Five
.Yeah. Weird birthday today. Not bad, but somewhat on the strange side. It’s one of those rounder numbers, divisible by five, and therefore attaches greater significance to itself.
My company party was tonight, so it was kind of like that was a party just for me, and kind of like it had nothing to do with me at all.
It was good to be with people, and especially with friends from work, but strange to be only with friends from work. Strange too to be alone on my birthday; singledom isn’t new, and nor is singledom on my birthday, but somehow it feels particularly odd (and empty) on birthdays to not have a partner, a lover.
The Australian Open is on, and streaming, so I get to witness the struggles of consummately-skilled professionals locked in a strange approximation of combat thousands of miles away.
A taxi driver got a very good tip tonight, doubling up on the fact that it’s my birthday and the fact that taxi drivers make me think of my father, because what was a short period in his life happened at a time that it assumed a lot of significance in my mind and memories.
My birthday is near to the start of the year, and I’m taking advantage of this fact to essentially decide that for me the new year starts now, to try to recapture some of the momentum I had (or thought I had) going into 2009.
Some things to be thankful for, on my birthday: that I got this far at all; that I have the privilege to be somewhat comfortable; friends; family; humor; the fact that occasionally I can write things that aren’t awful; the fact that I live in a time when coding is easily accessible and that I can occasionally code things that aren’t awful; that I have (mostly) full use of my mind and body. Lots of other stuff that’s flickering around in my mind but which resists explicit categorization right here right now.
That I’m still here.