It’s my birthday!!! I love my birthday, it’s the day everything is about me. I think I feel this way because technically it’s not just my birthday, I’ve had to share it and that makes me cherish the my-ness of it more 🙂 It’s mine and my “little” brother’s. He was born on (hijacked!) my 6th birthday and I’ve shared my birthday ever since.
Which, lets be honest, once you’re past bratty teen years and get over yourself, is pretty awesome. I haven’t been home for our birthday for 3 years now, and I miss celebrating with my baby brother. We’ve done joint birthday parties, trips to the fun center for marathon games of laser tag and mini golf, got sushi and watched movies, and who remembers what else over the years.
But this is the 3rd year I haven’t been home over the summer. I graduated from law school and I spent that birthday stressing out because the bar exam was the next day. Last year I’d just gone on vacation with my family (see the pic above!) and couldn’t take off work again. And this year, I just started a new job and actually was planning on going to Gen Con, so wasn’t going to make it home anyway.
So my brother and I talk on the phone and we celebrate when we get together. This year he’s coming to visit over Halloween (which, if you do the math, is a sort of birthday for us… no, wait, don’t go there, brain. Ewwww, parents 🙂 So we’re going to celebrate then. When he came for my graduation, he wasn’t old enough to drink, so I get to take him to all the places he got left out of then, like Paterson House 🙂
Family at Paterson House.
You hit a certain age, you stop seeing your birthday as a time for gifts and you start seeing it as a benchmark, and then you start comparing yourself to others. When my dad was my age, he had a house, two kids and another on the way, and had been at his very good job as a computer scientist for about 6 years already. My birthday now comes with a sense that I should be doing more, be better, work harder, magically grow my career so it matches other people at my age and education level.
I miss the days when life was easy and birthdays meant cake, a party and gifts. But that’s a part of growing up. Responsibility comes with age. But, hopefully, with that comes ambition. The desire to do more, to take on more challenges and responsibilities and the ability to crush it! 🙂
And it still comes with cake, a party and gifts 😉
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