My B-day

My birthday. It always sneaks up on me – like a puma in the jungle. And just like that stealthy puma, my birthday engenders fear and regret, reaching the farthest and deepest edges of my aging soul.

Ouch. That makes my birthday sound pretty bad, I know. But it’s not all bad. After all, Jaimi baked me a cake!! So that definitely takes the edge off of the aforementioned negative feelings.

What I really mean to say is that my birthday is just another day, except it usually makes me feel a little bit bad about myself – even more so than the average day in the life of The Mill. This day forces me to think about the past year. What have I done since my last birthday? Did I read any good books? Am I in better physical shape? Do I own more stuff? How many hot dogs have I eaten?

All of these important reflections are easy to answer. But the underlying question/theme of it all – How have I IMPROVED myself this year? – is not such a cinch to elucidate.

Lucky for me, my birthday is pretty close to New Year’s, so I’ve struggled through this exercise pretty recently.

Here’s how I’m a better man, as compared to the man I was on my last birthday:

1) Caught up on Battlestar Galactica episodes.
2) Got a library card.
3) Found a cool real-time traffic website.
4) Wrote a bunch of wicked awesome posts on my blog.
5) Took home one fantasy baseball and one fantasy football title.
6) Cooked a delicious piece of steak at home.

Admittedly, these are all great accomplishments, and ones of which I should be massively proud. The only problem is that it should have taken me about 36 hours to complete the above list. Instead, it took me an entire year – or over 8,700 hours.

And this realization seems to strike me year after year. Sure I have all of these great accomplishments – sometimes the list stretches 8 or 9 items in length – but what did I do for the rest of the year? Besides sleep and eat?

I don’t know, and the past year is mostly a foggy blur to me now. I remember sitting in traffic quite a bit, but probably not more than 1,000 hours worth. I also exercised from time to time. And then there was our trip to Spain, and a few weekends in Philadelphia. So I’ve accounted for maybe 50 days out of 365 – 40 of which I spent in my car.

I’m intent on better bookkeeping this year, so that I can track my ups and downs. Did I really spend a total of 34 days brushing my teeth last year? And 42 days doing the dishes? Lord knows I spent at least that much time tying my shoes and folding my socks.

So maybe it does all add up, and there isn’t much time left over to accomplish great things.

That’s why life can seem so short. Take better notes.

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