Age 26

Oh. Hello there. I would ask if you're doing well, but since it's a blog, I can't know when I'll get a response. So, to not risk seeming impolite, I hope you're having a great day. :-)

Today is my birthday. It's funny, but compared to telling someone "today is my birthday" face-to-face, it seems much easier to type it out and post it on the Internet. Not fully sure why... There are times when I think "yes, it's my birthday. let's just move on and take care of x, y, and z", but there are other times where I like the specialness of it. (I'm not seeing a red line under "specialness", so it's apparently a real word.)

Birthdays are kind of like New Year's. Some indicate a magic threshold where things are magically different from one day to the next. The "I'm 18 so I can vote/enlist/smoke/gamble/do what I want!"'s and the "OMGIT'S2000ANDY2KWILLDESTROYEVERYTHING!!!"'s, if you will. Others are less significant, but have their perks. The "I'm 25, so my driving skills are tried and true"'s and "Well, 2010 ends the period of time when we had no clue what to call the decade"'s. Then, there's... meh. 2013 seems kind of meh outside of being done with Mayan paranoia*. I turned 26 today (another fact I don't openly tell people in public) and that feels meh as well. I even googled "what happens when you turn 26" and the results I found were other blog posts about personal goals people set out, or the conflict between your inner child and "dang, I'm almost 30... I'm old!" voice.

But you know... just because a number may seem meh at first glance doesn't mean that you can't make it more significant. ("Double check those double negatives." "Thanks, inner voice.") You can definitely add value to any number/date, but it has to be meaningful to you. This is a tangent, but it kind of bugs me when people make such a huge deal about New Year resolutions because if that date isn't meaningful to you, then why bother? If you want to change something, change it today or move things around and start it tomorrow. Carpe diem and all that fish. Stuff.

Focus.

Now that I'm on back on track, I don't have much more to say on the subject. I have some thoughts about how I can make being 26 years old significant for me. Some are little more than recent thought seeds and some have been brewing for a while now. (Mixed metaphors - I should go to bed.) In any case, I have some ideas and now is just as good a time as any to start them.

Here's to a prosperous year!

~Matt

* Okay, so once I was a paragraph past this point, I realized that 2013 has another fun fact: it's the first year since 1987 to be represented by 4 unique numbers. So right before my birth time today, I've been alive for one year's worth of time that has a year represented by 4 unique numbers. I'm not sure if it's better or worse that I realized that fact while browsing a meme website.