Thirty-Nine

I'm supposed to care about my birthday. I'm also supposed to care about Halloween. I care about neither.

As a kid, I always dressed up for Halloween and hung out with friends, causing mischief and so on. Yet in 2003, a friend and I decided to try something new and go see Scary Movie 3 at the Hawthorne Cineplex instead. Because I subjected myself to 84 minutes of the worst comedy I ever watched (save for maybe The Incredible Jessica James), I immediately lost all taste for Halloween.

Years later, at college in Orlando, I decided to impress a fellow classmate and dress up as V from V for Vendetta for the Halloween party they invited me to. When I arrived to a packed house, I realized two things:

-No one else was wearing a mask
-I had a previously undiagnosed plaster allergy

I spent the rest of the night broken out in hives and drinking bad whiskey while listening to The Mountain Goats in my dorm as my racist roommate played God of War in the common area.

Sometime in the early 2010s, I told everyone — friends, family, etc. — not to make a big deal or any deal out of my birthday. After some kvetching, they obliged. It was a peaceful year, sure, but when they continued to oblige the following year without any urging (and every year that followed), I felt a strange silence — of which I made peace with rather quickly.

Around this time of the sudden lack of birthday celebrations, posting a photo of yourself and talking about how it's your birthday became the norm on Instagram. I followed the norm, got a bunch of well wishes from friends but mostly people I haven't spoken to in years, and went about my day.

Up until last year, this post plus a small, uncomplicated dinner (with my wife and a friend) is more or less how I celebrated my birthday. No presents. No cards. A few texts and some persistent calls from boomer family members, but I largely enjoyed the silence.

I've been off Instagram for over a year now. I'll detail more about my year off the platform soon, but I can quickly say that burnout from social media and Ari Lennox's announcement that she was leaving Instagram (even though she returned) had me make the decision to delete it around 370 days ago. As I've been off Facebook for seven years, today marks my first birthday in over 20 where random people I used to know and some I do didn't wish me a happy birthday on a Meta platform. (I did catch a few strays on LinkedIn, for whatever reason.)

I worked today, as I do most Mondays. I sent emails, attended meetings, bailed out of meetings, and called reporter friends to help on a few things. I even spoke to a class at UT Austin about deepfakes and made off-color jokes about Texas. Tomorrow, I get to have that small, uncomplicated lunch and go about my day, which I mostly have off.

I do this for birthdays, Halloweens, and most holidays — not to be the "I don't take this day seriously" guy, but because I really do enjoy every day as its own thing and feel all days could be special. Some of my favorite days in life were ordinary days of the week where something beautiful just happened, which is why I do my best not to artificially force such days to happen on myself or others.

The best days of my life happen when they happen on no set schedule, and I find them to be the best kinds of surprises. The day my dad and I woke up at 7 and went to Denny's under the freeway. My sister's wedding a couple months back. The time I consumed a fair amount of hallucinogens and finally came to terms with my dad's passing. The day I met my wife. Every day with my wife.

These are the days I treasure most.