Flailing wildly towards my 33rd year

That time of the year is nearly upon me, when every relative and friend crawls out of the woodwork to dote birthday praise upon me and try to get me to celebrate that fateful day in April when I was birthed. Funny thing is that for the past five years I have always worked like a bastard on my birthday. Three of those I probably averaged 18 hour work days as the art director of HGTV's Designstar. Nothing like being a one-man department to kill a day. I remember friends making dinner reservations at 8 in 2007. I called at 7 to tell them I wouldn't be ready until 9. Then called every hour on the hour to keep pushing it back until I was told at midnight that the party was over and they had celebrated my birthday hellaciously for me. I was proud of them. That day started at 6am and I got home at 2am. The following year I was in Las Vegas and raged at the bar nearly every night for two months, except on April 6th. I watched a handful of movies in my hotel room and actually got a few hours of sleep. Probably would have been at the bar if the bartender I was in love with had been working. Lucky me.

I have never been a birthday celebrator for myself. I'll celebrate anyone else's like a champ. Seems like every other day we're celebrating someone's at work. In college we used to celebrate everyone's birthday for a week, such youthful debauchery. When mine rolls around I go all ninja and creep around until I'm sure I'm under everyone's radar. Usually peeps don't pay such close attention to their facebook pages alerting them to it. I had some reason for initially putting the info there in the first place. Can't recall it now, may be time to erase the evidence.

Every year the joke is the same, another year older but still acting like a kid. I used to joke that I still acted like a 12-year old throughout all my twenties, just one with a big salary. This year feels different though. After coasting through the past five years without a care in the world I got caught by a few curveballs last year and finally had to do some maturing. About fucking time. I'm actually looking forward to the upcoming year in a new and exciting way, like a big ol', grand ol' spring cleaning of all the bad habits that have kept me from achieving any real goals. Hell, I think I might actually even remove head from ass long enough to come up with some real goals to focus on.

But first I need to do the annual "I've been buying myself presents for the past 365 days, Mom. There's nothing I want" speech.

Tentative counter begins now, ticking down the days until my return to the big apple. 35 days or so. I love tv shows that keep returning year after year, closest I'll ever get to having a real job again.

Until next time.