Careening, Curating, Creating

My thirty-ninth year has begun. 

I’m not one of those people who has a birthday month, or even a birthday week – unless it’s the usage of the extra day of PTO given to me by work, or coupons in my email that I mostly discard. It’s never been a big deal. As a kid, there was always a family dinner on the day of; I’d still get chastised for what or how much I ate, dessert was often forcibly shared. Honestly, looking back, I can’t remember most of the parties with friends; those that I do remember, were they mine, or my sister’s that I helped with? No idea, especially since my parents were pretty content with “this worked for the first one, let’s do it again.” 

I remember my 16^th birthday, not for any sort of license or freedom, but because it was the first time I had to call 9-1-1. 

I remember my 21^st birthday, going to Fenway with my boyfriend and my bestie and spending $16 on one beer and two hot dogs. I’ve always been a lightweight, so the pint of Sam Adams kept me warm in the chilly April evening.

I remember misunderstandings and hurt feeling with Hawthorne until we figured out birthday traditions. It had always been far more special for them than me, and it took time to get used to it. They wanted me to take the day off and spend it with them, both for their birthday and ours. I always prioritized theirs, when it came back to the issue of PTO. We got the hang of it, and spent most of them fishing, with some sort of seafood for dinner and chocolate for dessert, and cards we delighted in picking for each other. 

I remember the first birthday after Oscar died, and how I felt like I didn’t deserve one. 

I remember the first birthday after Hawthorne died, and how desperately I wanted no one to acknowledge it. I didn’t want to celebrate. One of my besties ordered dinner to be delivered to my house, and that was the perfect balance of being taken care of and left alone. 

I remember writing about birthdays before; but if I go looking to make sure I don’t repeat myself, I’ll get distracted, and this post will end up in the growing file of “unfinished and-or unpublished blog posts.” 

I remember turning 37 and feeling unable to function, turning the age Hawthorne was when they died. I remember the jokes with their friends about careening towards forty, and feeling like they stopped mid-pinwheel.

I know the most recent years have been dinner with the cousins and cake; I remember last year being the first time I wanted to celebrate in what felt like forever. I got to spend the weekend with some forged family. I was only recently back on my feet from my health scare, so things were a little weird.  

This year, I was excited for the things surrounding my birthday, the time I’d get to spend doing things I loved. 2025 has been full of change, heartaches and utter joy smashing into each other. With so much in flux, I was even less concerned with the actual date than usual. 

It rolled in like any day, which honestly, is the way I like it. The child was a creature – I believe putting on shoes was the breaking point, but that could have been another day. I went to work, saw a friend who’d stopped by for a visit; her little man being exactly 38 years and 10 months younger than me, we obviously celebrated with sweet baby snuggles. I spoiled myself rotten at the bakery with croissants the size of my face and two different types of cake. My own man was celebrating, his first day at his new job, and he came over afterwards. We dragged the kid out for a walk, managing to catch that golden hour in warm spring air before diving into literal pounds of seafood – fried catfish for me, mussels and shrimp for him – and hot dogs for Lucy. We’d had edibles for an appetizer, and cupcakes throughout the night.

And it was wonderful. A normal day, a normal amount of stress and grief and work shit; magic and cake and love sprinkled throughout like Funfetti. 

I don’t stress much about aging. I have a few grays – still a countable amount. I’m starting to see fine lines at the corners of my mouth and my eyes, evidence of a lifetime of emotion. My belly is round and soft after carrying kiddos, a little extra flesh under arms when I flex. My knees ache when my weight goes up, old sports (and general lack of grace) injuries make themselves known. I groan when I have to change positions at the end of the day, and I use the heated seat in the car to make my back feel better no matter the temperature outside. I’ve got probiotics and aspirin in my pillbox, and the biggest contained of ibuprofen you can get.

I am always learning to take better care of myself; it is an ever-continuing education. I got new reading glasses with the blue light thingy, and a recommendation for yellow-tinted lenses for night driving with the influx of stupid LED headlights. I’ve had my cervical cancer screening, and check my skin for changes in freckles regularly. I finally hit my weight loss goals, and am trying to focus more on movement than scale numbers. I’ve dealt with consecutive injuries – right bicep, right ankle sprain, left bicep – so just now feeling ready to dust off the gym membership. 

I am trying to incorporate both physical activity (walking, gardening) and deliberate rest and relaxation into my days. My man has been teaching me to play video games on the Switch – resurrecting my love of Tetris and Spyro, and introducing me to Spiritfarer.

I’ve been working on a social media exit plan and reboot, working to cut down the time I lose to anxiety and distraction on my phone. I’ve fully deleted TikTok, tumblr, and Twitter. I’ve closed my personal Instagram, keeping my author IG and Threads accounts, as well as my Facebook. However, one of the best things I did was to delete Facebook from my phone. Not my account – I still have it, personal and professional, but now I have to use the computer to use it. I don’t know about you, but scrolling on a laptop is not the same thing as just thumbing the screen on my phone. 

The screen time itself was not the issue; it was what lead to the screen in the first place. I remember Hawthorne telling me they used their phone (reddit, mostly) to keep themselves distracted from their physical pain. I remember with extreme clarity the moment I decided that was a good idea – sitting on the red couch in the new spot I’d chosen after they died, Lucy napping in her swing. I couldn’t read. I didn’t want to watch anything; everything reminded me of them and I couldn’t choose something new. I picked up my phone. 

More recently I’ve come to realize just how much I rely on scrolling to “manage” my anxiety. Once that rise of overwhelm started, that whiny, physical discomfort of having to do something I didn’t want to, or was anxious/nervous about, or I just… didn’t want to be so damn present, I picked up my phone. And I hated it. I didn’t want to do it, but I had conditioned myself. And then it got to the point where it didn’t matter why I’d picked it up – to make an important call, check the weather for the day, see the picture from Lucy’s school or message from my man – I’d end up scrolling. I tried setting limits and alarms; that only worked when I handed someone else the control to set the password on the parental limits so that once 11pm rolled around, my phone became just a phone with an alarm and messaging. But that didn’t stop the scrolling the other 18 hours of the day. 

I need environmental and engineering controls. I don’t respect self-imposed limits; if someone else were to tell me “no, you can’t go there,” but they leave me with the key? Eventually I’m going to be the horror-movie blonde who finds a way to justify exploring it and discovering the consequences for herself. For something like breaking self-imposed limits on screen time, the consequences (feeling guilty) just fed back into the reason I picked the damn thing up in the first place. 

I don’t want to be scrolling. If I’m using my phone, I want it to be because I want to be – not mindless distraction. I kept my games – Wordle and Squardle and Killer Sudoku. Those are daily things I enjoy spending time on, sipping coffee sitting in the car or on the couch. No guilt. I kept Instagram on my phone, and Messenger – I don’t get stuck in those and lose time. I kept Threads – now that one I have a limit for, because I do get distracted, but so far, it’s quite easy to come back from and there haven’t been any negative feelings. Reacting to everyone for Facebook birthday wishes on the computer was a pain in the ass, and forced me to take the time to do it by hand and actually read the names of everyone who left one. 

There’s no guilt for me in deciding to pick up the Switch, or play an extra Sudoku game, or indulge in more smut on my Kindle. There’s no uncomfortable shame in using my laptop to make a post, or edit, or put new words down. To me, that means that my amount of time using screens is within healthy parameters. 

It’s also forcing me to face my anxieties differently, especially at work, or with interpersonal things. I no longer have that easy distraction. It might not seem like deleting a few apps and accounts could do that, but I simply don’t use what remains the same way. I’ve sat on less emails, had to apologize for not getting back to people sooner less, been (somewhat) more prepared for things. I’ve managed to do not distract myself away from some emotionally painful things, both work and personal. I’m fact-checking what I do hear, trying to be more responsive and less reactionary. It feels impossible sometimes, what with the current state of the politics, but it’s absolutely necessary to my mental health. 

Best of all, it’s re-lighting some of the creative candles that have sputtered out. This right here, case in point; like I said, multiple unfinished posts that may never see the light of internet fame. I’ve been playing more with collage, with markers, with coloring and stickers. I’ve picked Master Class back up, and have been watching the creative folks I follow on Youtube more than fifteen-years old sad music videos. 

One of the posts I have hidden away is mostly memes about why we need art; about art as revolution, creativity as response – to injustice, to war, to fascism, to a government that doesn’t seem to want so many of us to exist. I may resurrect it (though Easter Sunday would have been better for that I suppose). 

At the moment, however, I feel like I am the center of six orbits that both intersect, and remain out of sync, with each other. I don’t like this much unknown, this much simultaneous change and ambiguity. It’s not comfortable. It doesn’t feel good in my body. But if wisdom comes with aging, maybe this is the evidence – my phone is in the other room, and my battery is dying; I don’t have time for distraction. I’ve cultivated what I am able to take in, and focusing on what I’m able to do, to take action in the ways that don’t empty me. 

And so I leave you with this; one quote in one picture, what would have been the capstone to the other post (and the article above about Ethan Hawke’s TED Talk).

Let us grow and age and create, speak and write and do language; and let the 39 dripping birthday candles blow out, and not one more.