Birthday

Note: I wrote this, but forgot to post it, on my birthday, January 19.

I keep trying to write longer and longer stuff on facebook, not to mention twitter, which those formats just aren’t for. Whatever their good points and drawbacks, they don’t work as a diary, for me. So I decided I should work on this journal more...

I woke up with a really vivid and weird dream on Martin Luther King holiday, and thought about the word dream and I was compelled to read the text of his “I had a dream” speech which is of course as good as you remember it but better. Plus, just interesting, and interesting to try to think about what it might have felt living here in 1963.

Of course, I was living in 1963, I was three years old. Today, incidentally is my 50th birthday, which means, I guess, I’ve been here for fifty years now. You could say I’m beginning my sixth decade, if you want to make me feel even older.

But I don’t feel old. Or rather, I’ve felt old for a long, long time now—since I was twelve at least, or maybe 14 anyway. But I don’t feel much older now. I’ve had physical ailments pretty much spaced out all that time, but I’ve recovered pretty well. I feel like I keep learning stuff, but that doesn’t make me think I was a former dumbass or anything. I don’t think that I have to necessarily start acting a different way now, though at any point I might decide to start acting a different way or try to reinvent myself someway—but just because I can, not because it’s expected of me.

I don’t feel like I’m at all satisfied with what I’ve done in my life, but no matter what I do, I don’t ever expect to feel that way. You look at what could be considered some people’s accomplishments and say, holy shit, what must they think when they think about themselves? Do they go, “I’ve sure done a lot! I should just take it easy now.” Most likely those people are people who are never satisfied, and that’s why they do so much. But then, maybe they do get to some point where they say, “I’ve done enough. I’m just going to take walks and smell the smells of the world and live in the moment and relax.” Good for them if they feel that way, no matter what they’ve done or haven’t done—like that stuff can really be measured anyway. Good for me, too, if I ever feel that way.