I took a deep breath just before I started typing. Took it. I inhaled almost greedily and exhaled just as purposefully. It's a great feeling.
Birthdays, holidays, new years. They all make all of us take a moment to look at our lives, to measure ourselves against something, but not always in a real way, in a way beyond noticing that on certain days of the year we feel the need to take stock of ourselves. But what does this really mean? What are we measuring ourselves against?
It has always seemed to me that some people - maybe most people - have a sort of built-in checklist, imposed by society or not, that allows them to determine how successful they are. Common entries include but are not limited to: go to college, get married, buy a house, have babies, make shitloads of money, etc. And because I viewed these things as items on a checklist I was supposed to be using to keep track of my life, I think I've been trying to follow my own path, but the horrific checklist has always been in view, so maybe I've been just as bound by it as I was afraid to be, just in a different way than if I had been trying to check things off of a list...
On the other hand, even as I have avoided having a checklist, there are things that I have and haven't done that make me feel more or less successful - if I can still use that word - than I have wanted or expected to be. Perhaps one day I will be able to articulate these things without making them sound like items on a list.
(For example: I have a lot of really great friends, I have a good relationship with my parents and sisters, I have a beautiful nephew I never get to see, I have a master's degree, I am becoming a better writer even though I haven't published anything, I love being in the restaurant business, I want to open a bar, I have traveled a lot, I want to travel more, I want to write a novel I am proud of, I want to write respected essays, I have been in love, I have had my heart broken, I have had the mad passionate love affair I always wanted, and it is beautiful. I try to live responsibly, in terms of the planet and my fellow lifeforms, human or animal or vegetative or otherwise. I have 28 cents in my bank account, and I'm not sure where I'm going to live in five weeks, but I have had and am having some amazing experiences, and that is all that matters to me.)
And now I'm going to go have a drink at my job, and then meet friends for dinner, and then barhop around the east village, and that is exactly what I want to do on this, my thirtieth birthday, and Friday after work there will be partying until dawn, and next week I will write the story I've been cooking up while I've been celebrating this last week, and it will be brilliant. Cheers.
