Happy Belated Birthday

I just wanted to take a moment to wish me a belated Happy Birthday. It's alright though... I forgive me for being a week behind.

I don't tend to make a big deal out of my birthday. Last year, Cherry insisted on taking me out to dinner. This year she did a whole birthday day. It was nice, and it's nice that I have friends who care that it's my birthday, but the actual events of the day aren't really what I choose to focus on.

It's more that birthdays aren't a big deal to me. I'm not quite sure when this happened. I remember counting down the days to my birthday and then being all excited about the presents and such. But now I count down the days to the next Rock Band related release and am all excited about the new drumkit that I'm going to get sometime. Whenever they start shipping the damn things. But that's another topic.

I took off of work this year because... Well... I don't know really. I guess just in case all of a sudden I started to care that it was my birthday and I wanted to do something? But then when it was actually the day it was just like every other day. Nothing felt different.

Birthdays used to feel magical. It used to feel like it was really my day and everything for the day was about me. It doesn't really feel that way anymore. It's just a day. Oh sure... The day's events were up to me and we could have done anything I wanted, but really that's sort of like any other day. I could probably get a few friends together to play racquetball or go out to eat or play Rock Band with me. These things are fun and nice and all that, but they just don't feel necessarily special.

I don't know... I had planned to write this thing up all week, but have just been tired because of the new work schedule so this is really the first opportunity I've had to sit down and write it. And now I'm not really sure of exactly what I meant to say.

The main point is just that birthdays used to seem special and magical and that they don't anymore. I kind of miss it. I appreciate that Cherry and Emily cared enough to do what they could to make my birthday special for me, but it didn't really work. And it's entirely not their faults.

I think if I had a girlfriend who decided to give me an extra special day it would be more meaningful to me. I don't know how I feel about thinking that. I don't know that I like thinking that a girlfriend planning a special day around me is more meaningful than good friends doing it. I think all throughout the day I felt like it was just another day and that there was really no need for my friends to regard it as anything else, and so a lot of the reason that I didn't feel like the day was successfully special was because I resisted it becoming so.

Ah well, this is an uncharacteristically short entry, but I just don't have as much to say on the subject as I thought I did... Or maybe as I did a week ago when I decided to write this whenever I got a chance.

Basically, I miss caring about special days... Birthdays and holidays. Well, I guess this is growing up.