36

It's my birthday today; I'm 36. So far it's going far better than my 35th birthday, which was mostly spent in bed recovering from a half-assed night out (or two), which was more to keep myself out of the apartment and distract me from my brain than to enjoy myself or be with friends. I'm definitely in a better spot this year on a few fronts: my employment situation is more stable, I got some much-needed medication, and I'm finally more open about who I am to the people that needed to know most. I also felt more deserving of the company of the good folks in my life, a number of which came out to celebrate with me at The Foggy Goggle or Charlie's Club on Thursday night (I deliberately scheduled my outing to take advantage of the long weekend so I could recover from the shenanigans and shindiggery that usually take place at birthday parties. I'm getting old, folks). It was a good night.

It was wonderful to see everyone that came out or who happened to stop by (third rule of Charlie's: you're guaranteed to see at least one good person randomly drop in for a drink). I always worry too much about the number of people who couldn't make it or that I neglected to invite, but I need to use the rest of the year to nurture relationships instead of limiting my socialization to the big events like birthday parties and Haliversaries. I've said this before, but I'm quite awkward and shy unless I'm fully comfortable with a person, and that affects my ability to reach out; I'm always anxious about how it's going to be received. That's also a large reason why I never really embraced online dating at all even before the big fog descended; I have to spend a lot of time with someone to know whether I really click with them. (Of course, there's still the ever present danger of developing "the feels", which one day I hope will either manage to respond to with something other than "oh fuck fuck shit fuck!" or generally making things weird).

I've mentioned this before, but one of the reasons I hold these events is because I like seeing the people from my different social circles coming together and potentially forming their own connections with each other. There seems to be a disproportionate number of my friends who are heavily into any combination of reading, drinking tea, global travel, bicycling, craft beer, and/or creating art (or music); I wonder how much of this is conscious curation on my part and how much is just natural gravitation towards one another.  This doesn't even include the connections I made through shared interests in sketch comedy.

Speaking of sketch, I decided to start reposting my old SNL reviews on social media to allow me to get the rest of the 1984-85 reviews written and edited and posted on a regular schedule instead of frantically trying to assemble each review every week during my spare time; it's easier to write personal entries right now, but most of my traffic is for the reviews. I want to be able to branch out from just the SNL stuff on the other blog too; more writing about books, music, maybe get some live shows in there. I've had these grand plans in the past, but soon felt worn down by the usual grind of my life. 

This coming week's going to be a big adjustment with the new job starting tomorrow and all I need to get used to in the next little while; I'm a big creature of habit, so I'm expecting a bit more exhaustion than usual over the next few weeks, but I'm trying to keep aware of what I want to get done. Keeping this in mind, today was spent on some low-key adulting (laundry, returning cable/internet equipment) and cafe writing (because who knows when I'll feel up to this again); I'm also just going to treat myself to a quiet dinner out tonight. There are a number of fronts on which I want to get better organized (housework, creative time, finances), so perhaps this will be my unofficial goal for the coming year.

Anything beyond that will be gravy.