So this week I turned the page on yet another chapter of my life. I officially entered my 30s. Last year was the BIG “dirty thirty” turnover and this was the step in.
As I had been not single for a majority of this year, I haven’t seen as many of my friends as I’d have liked to. Add to it last year’s awesome birthday trip to Seattle was not in the works as I’m currently a Muse for Hire as well as teensy bit pregnant. (Read: not even showing just yet)
As things have been a bit all over the map and tumbling down as well as riding up (I will go into them in other posts but you can start by reading this one here and this one here to get an idea of where to start) I started to have a few rain cloud thoughts about this year’s birthday. A couple of shitty phone calls later from my past and, well, I wasn’t exactly feeling the most bubbly about everything.
Granted: there were TONS of birthday messages on my Facebook wall and a few of you even reached out to me on Twitter. And that was fantastic and completely appreciated.
Despite the TONS of friends and wishes, There were only a few people who even asked what I was up to… less than I could count on one hand… and one of them lived cross country.
I felt crappy about it. Silly as it were, and knowing that I had dropped off the radar a bit with my relationship, I still was bummed. Moreso, I felt bad about being bummed- worried that it was potentially just another case of pregnancy hormones trying to get the best of me on my otherwise productive day.
It wasn’t until I ended up telling my current roommate about my plans for the evening that things really came into view. As it turned out, he had talked to another friend of mine who also knew what was going on and they were trying to arrange a small little outing for me.
I felt like a total asshole.
“People probably assumed you already had plans because, like me, you’re always so busy.”
I bucked up a bit and helped pull the reins. I reached out to a few close friends and asked them to dinner. As it turned out, there will be more dinners in the works in the next coming days. Friends were happy to go and hang out with me and have dinner and what not to celebrate. They, like my friend commented, just assumed that I had other plans.
At dinner I mentioned the whole thing to friends as well. It was a unanimous thing said amongst everyone. As active as we are in our daily lives, how often, unless you have a set group of friends that you do things with CONSTANTLY how often do you take the time to ask someone what they are doing for their birthday? Really take a moment and step back and think about it. You might be incredibly surprised.
In a day and age where we are so digitally connected, we too often forget just how much it means to someone (who yes might totally be busy a lot of times) to even get asked the question of what they’re doing. It may seem petty in a the scheme of things, it could mean the world to… even the people you think might think are social rockstars.
Special days are special because of the people we share them with.
While it’s true that social media is a great tool to stay connected with friends it doesn’t replace the power of going one step further and showing you are also real life person outside of a page.
I am an Enigma 