It's My Birthweek(s)!

I emerged from Vermont this weekend--ending a vacation so lazy and idle, so outside of time, that it practically counts as a second womb (all I did was hang with my high school friend Cary and eat junk food for four solid days. Scoff if you wish, but we beat Halo 3!)--and then got to work where my computer's hard drive died yesterday in a sudden blue-screened whimper. So today, with a new hard drive in place, I'm slowly reassembling my entire workplace from scratch: reloading mail preferences, getting coworkers' IM addresses, et cetera. It's like someone stole my entire life-wallet; you forget how much stuff computers remember for you.

Tomorrow is my 39th birthday, and I'm feeling unusually sensitive to rebirth-y themes all around me. Not due to any mid-life crisis, I think--you have mid-life crises when you're not where you wanted to be, and I feel more or less on track at the moment. (Thanks, This American Life! You've spared me the cost of a compensatory sportscar!) But just because Vermont showed me what a completely different life would be like. (St. Alban's is a town of 8,000, and it's possible that the only reason people live there is because of the fall foliage.) And because reassembling my computer is forcing me to reexamine everything I have attached myself to as I reattach again.

Last year I had a wonderful girlfriend who very generously did the organizing and made my birthday an actual event at a cool location with some close friends. This year I'm solo, and I'm bad at organizing anything. So I've decided that my birthday is going to last all week, starting with last weekend (Vermont! My friend Cary, whom I've known for 25 years! Halo!) and continue tonight (I'm going to a storytelling show and will definitely go out afterwards with all the great folks from the scene), and then proceed all the way to this weekend, because I'll be traveling to New Haven with The Moth to tell my story again ("The Most Heartwarming Wet T-Shirt Contest Ever"), and there I will meet my most recent friend, a woman I'll call D. who has been brightening my life for the past few months. From old and comfy to new and challenging; from stasis to motion; from silly games to paid professionalism! That's a hell of a birthday arc, and it's worth spending a whole week-plus on. Whew!