With neither a bang nor a whimper.
I’ve never been a big fan of New Year’s Resolutions. My birthday is January first and I’m not keen on spending the day thinking about all the ways I’m an awful person and how to change immediately. I’d prefer my birthday to include opening presents, taking naps, and eating a lot of cake instead. That is also how I would describe Saturdays.
As I’ve mentioned here before, though, this year I’m turning thirty. Listen, I know I should stop whining about it. My older friends have done everything from tell me I’m being a jerk to threatening to squirt me with mustard if I didn’t stop squawking. The way I see it, though, I only have a few hours left. After that, I’ll be too busy being thirty to worry about it anymore.
I was going to do this decade round up thing, where I talked about how different I am since the day I turned twenty — Chicago, seriously? And married? Would not have guessed — and how I am trying to be a more proactive person rather than reactive and I think organizing my stuff might actually be fun! and blah blah boring blah. Instead, here are the things that I know, as an almost thirty-year-old.
Creativity is multiplicative. The more you work, the more you get out of it. You’re never going to run out of ideas.
Creative anxiety never goes away. The trick is learning to work around it, not giving in to it.
The internet was actually invented for the disbursement of cat pictures.
It’s never too late for a fresh start.
And finally, from my patron saint, Kurt Vonnegut: There’s only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.
Now I’m going to spend the day with P, eating delicious Middle Eastern food (another new thing I got this decade) and listening to The Postal Service, which is my favorite record of the last ten years. Later today, I have the promise of an adventure. Tomorrow I will have my traditional birthday dinner with my family — chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes, black eyed peas (for luck!) and the fried okra my mom is trying to track down.
There will be presents and cake and it isn’t even Saturday.
I am so blessed. Happy new year.
