Forty two is of course the “Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.” (if you haven’t yet read the 5-book Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, I suggest you do so, you are in for a treat.)
For some reason I imagined I would be able to take at least a couple of days off of everything else I’m doing to chill and actually craft a well-written, deep, introspective post for the occasion, but alas, various things I’m working on and all the usual distractions means I am here in the early morning hours of the day itself typing this out. Likely to just rant a bit here instead of putting out anything coherent.
It’s weird celebrating your birthday in the middle of a worldwide pandemic, when most of the usual celebration trappings are inaccessible. It’s one of the reasons why the birthday mananita debacle was such a big deal to a lot of people. While these supposed “public servants” flaunt their privilege, the rest of us are deprived of things like seeing our friends and loved ones in person, celebrating milestones, or even the simple pleasures of eating out.
I’ve actually written quite a few of these birthday posts by now, though not as regularly as I’d have liked. I read through a few of them to help me decide what to write for today (didn’t really help). My favorite has to be the one with thirty eight lessons I’ve learned through the years.
Perhaps it’s for the best, maybe even if I had gotten a few days off I still wouldn’t have been able to come up with anything satisfying enough. I mean, the point of taking time off for myself was to get away from the world for a bit and be all introspective and to spend time with my own thoughts, but with this pandemic, I might have been doing far too much time doing that already. Perhaps that’s why I’m not really complaining about the spike in busy-ness I’ve had over the past month or so. It’s sort of a welcome respite from all the self-reflection this pandemic time has given me.
Given that this is the first birthday after I quit Facebook, I am expecting much, much fewer birthday greetings this year. Interesting how a lot of people are probably dependent now on Facebook to tell them when other people are having birthdays. It is no big loss; the people who are important will remember. That doesn’t mean I’m not grateful and amazed if someone unexpected should remember. A couple of days ago someone I’d only known for less than five years actually remembered to greet me, except the greeting came two days early due to uncertainty about the exact date. It’s nice to be remembered, no matter how stoic we pretend to be.
I almost impulse-bought a Switch yesterday, luckily a friend talked me out of it. Would have made a fine self-birthday gift, but my gaming backlog is still pretty ridiculous as it is.
It’s a bit ironic that in last year’s post I complained about an uneventful 365 days and look what we have now (waves hands around). I hope I didn’t jinx 2020. Next year is a more boring number, maybe we’ll have a better year?
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