Birthday Thoughts

 

So, it’s been a bit of a busy day for posts, hasn’t it? I’ve spotlighted an LGBTQ cyberpunk novel, hosted a guest post, released a novel, announced another book, and thrown in a free short story for good measure. Honestly, I made this day a busy one on purpose, largely because I like to keep myself occupied. I’ve never really been any good at sitting around and doing nothing, even on days that I’m meant to take it easy. Like today.

Today, I officially turned 35. Whether that’s old or not really depends on who you speak to. I still remember my kids were shocked when I hit 30 and declared me almost dead. It made me smile because, while I never went that far, I do remember being that young and viewing adulthood as a lifetime away.

Myself though? I don’t feel old. For one, I still get ID’d when buying certain things, so I can’t be doing too badly for myself, right? On top of that, in some ways, very little has changed for me. I spent my youth playing Sonic games, watching anime, and reading Turtles comics. Now, I play Sonic games, watch anime, and read Turtles comics. Plus a bunch of other stuff.

I think that my teenage self would be happy with that. I doubt I’d believe me if I told myself about the stuff we’ve been up to though. Looking back, I’ve squeezed a lot of stuff in in the short few years that have comprised my life so far. Getting involved with the wrestling industry, cosplaying, getting published by a real publishing house, performing at a live charity concert, modeling (literally once), running this site. I built my first video game at age 14 – working with my then 12-year-old brother – and distributed it around my high school on 3.5″ floppy disks. And that’s just the creative stuff. I’m a parent and a partner. I’ve grown to be comfortable with myself. And I’ve survived through a whole lot of stuff that I never even considered could happen to me.

I don’t know whether that all sounds like bragging, or if the end makes it seem like this is going to be a sad post. I’m not aiming to make either true. The point of this post is to say thank you.

Thank you to everyone who has joined me on this wild ride called life so far. Whether we worked together on something, you’re a regular visitor to the site, you’re a family member or friend, you’re someone who I met fleetingly, or anything else. If you’ve been in my life at all, you’ve helped shape where I’m at.

So, thank you.

To end things, I’m going to post two songs that I’ve been playing on my birthday for a while now. The lyrics fit with how I feel each year, I think.

 

The first is ‘Just Older’, a song on Bon Jovi’s 2000 album, ‘Crush’.

 

The second is ‘Birthday’, from the 2007 album ‘DreamCypher’ by The Cruxshadows: