<$BlogRSDUrl$>

Monday, March 01, 2004

Have a Good Time
Yesterday it was my birthday
I hung one more year on the line
I should be depressed
My life’s a mess
But I’m having a good time
--Paul Simon

I am a Leap Year baby. So yesterday I turned 11, which is, as I mentioned to somebody this morning, only about six in dog years. I am often asked if it feels weird not having a birthday every year, but that's the normal condition. What feels weird is actually having one. The best thing about it is that February 29 is hard for people to forget, so I usually get a barrage of cards, phone calls, and e-mails that I'm sure I wouldn't get if my birthday were February 28 or March 1.

As rare as birthdays are, then, I suppose I should be able to remember where I was and what I did on each of them, but I can't. I remember 2000, because on that very day I was trying to decide whether to uproot my life and take the corporate gig I'd been offered the day before, which would bring the Mrs. and I back to Wisconsin. But the others are a blur.

If I could page through the scrapbook that's buried somewhere in my landfill of an office, I could find newspaper clippings with pictures of me on my "first" and "second" birthdays, when I was big news in the old hometown. There were a couple of other kids who shared my February 29th birthday who got the same treatment. Once we stopped being cute little toddlers, reporters stopped coming around, although the paper did a followup story on all of us in 1980. (I remained open to press inquiries this year, but didn't get any. It's hell being yesterday's news.)

Like anybody else, I'm inclined to take stock of my life when my birthdays roll around. I have made some significant changes since 2003, let alone 2000--for one thing, trading the security of a corporate cubicle for the crapshoot that is freelancing, and in a crappy economy to boot, although the corresponding decrease in my insanity level has been more than worth it. I have started this blog, which has become far too important to me. All in all, though I like the Paul Simon lyric above, I can't say my life's a mess. But I'm havin' a good time.

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?