December(???) Talking Meme: Birthdays

[jaggedwolf]

From here, belacqua asked me to talk about past/present birthdays.

This is late because I was occupied by the topic itself, naturally. Anyway, I have lucked out here because my birthday is very conveniently timed - I've always had it off automatically for school and/or work, it coincided nicely with the former's calendar for the first 18 years of my life, and it makes thinking about a new year awfully convenient.

Most of my birthdays have been pretty good, spent with friends and/or family - one time they managed to pull off a surprise party, which was pretty impressive. For the years with parties, I used to get the exact same chocolate cake every year, because I am nothing if not boringly consistent.

2020's was quite nice: a brisk walk by the river; a large slice of chocolate cake that I have leftovers of; a NYE spent with friends that featured dumplings and an unexpected yet delightful marathon of Ted Lasso. (FYI, it's a fantastic tv show about football starring a mashup of Coach Taylor and Leslie Knope. Which football? Yes.)

I have been itching to throw a proper party one of these birthdays though. Perhaps when all this nonsense is over, I will finally do so.

---

Time for some unrelated EOY bookkeeping.

1. I am giving Twitter a shot again, trying to focus my attention on the good and the interesting and the friendly, while muting/blocking those bad-faith actors that make the site terrible (and politics ofc). I think it is going okay so far, and my unfiltered shitposting now lives at jaggedwolves.

2. Added the final update to my 2020 media list :D

Comments

[delphi]

Happy belated birthday! That sounds like a lovely way to have spent it. :)

[belacqua]

I have lucked out here because my birthday is very conveniently timed - I've always had it off automatically for school and/or work

Idk if you have this experience, but whenever I tell people who don't have December birthdays when my birthday is, they're like "oh that must suck to be overshadowed by Christmas" and I'm like... no? It's worth it to literally always have my birthday free? We're so spoiled, lmao.

I've never had a surprise party (and I'd like to keep it that way tbh XD), but I'm impressed that they pulled it off. And that sounds like a really nice 2020 birthday! You should definitely throw a proper party when this is all over, you have a great space for it.

[jaggedwolf]

Thanks! :)

[jaggedwolf]

Oh, no one's ever expressed the sentiment to me directly but I have seen that said before about Christmas birthdays. So sure, if my birthday was on Christmas itself I might've disliked it as a kid but literally any other holiday day is no big. NYE itself always felt like a nice transition off it for me. Agree on being spoiled, I am taken aback whenever a co-worker doesn't take their birthday off, lmao.

Honestly, regardless of whether it's near my birthday or not, I'm going to end up throwing a party once it's feasible to do so XD I miss both bars and parties too much.

[belacqua]

I am taken aback whenever a co-worker doesn't take their birthday off, lmao. Same! I guess if you grew up going to school on your birthday, you're used to it.

Sounds like a plan. I never went to parties that often tbh, but I really miss bars. (Sidenote: The Zoom burnout has really, really hit me.)

[jaggedwolf]

Oof, that sucks about the Zoom burnout. Sometime it's too much dealing with too many faces on a screen for too many hours at a time - audio-only calls take less mental energy IMO. I've also been hearing things about Gather Town, which seems like an interesting method for calls whose purpose isn't "slides presentation"