obstinate.org

So this weekend I went out with the bestest of friends. One of the topics discussed over delicious seafood combined with a crisp, mineral white was the topic of my birthday. It is coming up, and I will very shortly be 26.

I am not big on birthdays, I don’t make it an excuse to drink my face off for an entire week straight. However, I do appreciate affection from my loved ones just like the next person, but I am sort of over the ritual of it all. I don’t do gifts – I am sure that I will get a few best buy gift certificates and maybe a card mailed to me full of $25 cash. Really? I think all of that is a bit unnecessary. I don’t subscribe to that, the specific issue is that if I want something that is $25 – I already own it. That isn’t to say I haven’t received really excellent gifts, I have. Almost none of them had material value – or the material value was not important. What makes a gift great is the thought that went into it, and the delivery value. A last minute trip to radio shack is insulting, really. I would rather just have a “Happy Birthday, dude!” than a $25 gift certificate to Frys.

Anyways, in a discussion about such things with my bestest’s I defended my stance on this – and I was reminded “Mike, think of all that has happened to you in the past year”. I started to think about it, and I was genuinely taken aback. A whole lot has happened to me in the last year. I learned to hate, I learned to forget, I learned to love again – I learned what it is to be more (?) humble. I am on my 3rd job in a year, working on my moving to my 3rd city (wherever that may be). I have been on vacations, all of which were nearly spontaneous, made lots of new friends and ditched a lot of lousy ones.

Despite this, I think that everyone who knows me will still agree that despite the changes in my life, and the mixture of spices in my personality – I am still Mike. The delight, tragedy, drama and wonder that has happened to me in the past year has made me a better person as a whole. That is worth celebrating, and I will – I am not quite sure how, why, or when I will celebrate, but I am sure I will figure it out in the next few months. No need to be tied town to a particular day in order to celebrate mental, scratch that – monumental milestones in your life. I hereby declare the next year a celebration.

Anyways, as far as I have come in the past year, which I might regard in the long run as more significant as any other year in my life, has given me more to be thankful for. It is with irony that is as thick as a Sequoia,  that last year, when I was given nothing for my birthday (and loathed it) – that I was actually given something so intangibly valuable that it cascaded into something that has ultimately made me a better person. This year, I don’t want anything. Not because I have everything I want, but because I am on the path to being there.