Happy Birthday to Me

OK this is a BIRTH birthday (grin).  There was a time I would get really depressed on my birthday, usually because I would do what I like to call a Sledgehammer Inventory.  This is quite different from a 12-step inventory.  It is, in fact, exactly what it sounds like – a sort of beating down of everything I did so that I felt like a complete failure.  It meant skipping all the good stuff and making the bad stuff even worse than it actually was.  It was like a day of reckoning where I was in front of the angry townspeople (all me) who were ready to tar and feather me for my failings.

I still get a little contemplative this time of year – it’s more about a taking of temperature than a beat-down these days.  I try to honestly look at what I’m doing with my life and figure out what is going well, what isn’t going so well, and what might be better given up in the coming year (really, really not going well).

I’m not usually an advocate of special days being resolution days – I think it’s better to make resolutions when you recognize you need to change something, rather than pile them on Jan 1, birthdays, anniversaries etc.  It’s a lot more likely that you will change something if you aren’t arbitrarily setting a date to start a usually insurmountable list of dos and don’ts.

During those days, I used to avoid birthdays. I didn’t want people to celebrate my birthday because I didn’t think I deserved even recognition of my birth.  Pretty low feeling.  I think I first began to realize how silly this was when I recognized how much I liked recognizing people on their birthdays. I loved doing something special or surprising them with a really unique present.  And those people seemed to genuinely appreciate the recognition.  They, I realized, were normal. (haha – normal – that’s a concept!)

So today I’m not overly obsessed with my birthday, but I’m comfortable with someone doing something nice for me. I don’t cringe and try to avoid it.  As small as that might seem to some, for me, it was a big step forward because I no longer saw myself as my own personal, perennial whipping boy.

So I say it again: Happy birthday to me.