Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday to me, Happy BIRTHday toooooo meeeeeEEeeeeeee!!! (deep breath!) HaaAaappyyyy BiiiirrrrtthhhDaaaaayyy TooooOoooOooOOoooo MeeEeeeeEeeEee!

Today I am thirty-four, and that means I’ve officially entered my “mid thirties”…which I think is supposed to somehow kick-start a biological clock, or at least give me some age-related anxiety? It’s not. It’s just another birthday and I have to spend the next 4 months trying to remember how old I am all over again. (After writing the rest of this post and going through for a quick edit, it occurred to me that I have been pretty “meh” about my birthday for years. I don’t WANT to be “meh” about my birthday. A day-before-Valentine’s-Day birthday somehow seems to be anti-climactic, and there’s been a lot of Stuff that precludes me celebrating the way I want to. And I don’t like that. So. Next year for the BIG Three-Five, I shall throw a fabulous bash. I like celebrating, I love hosting people, and I’ve got a really really great birthday cake recipe.)(Moving on with thirty-four. Ahem.)

How will you spend your birthday?
In a really annoying twist of circumstances, I shall be going to work while Mr. Blue Eyes has the day off. I know. It’s stupid.

Compared to this time last year, are you: a) happier or sadder? b) thinner or fatter? c) richer or poorer?
Sadder; thinner; richer.

What did you do last year that you’ve never done before?
Went camping by myself. I felt kick-ass and super nervous, all at once.

What was your favorite discovery last year?
Overdrive! I’m only, like, 8 years late to the party, but I luuuurve Overdrive and use it to listen to audiobooks!

What do you hope to learn this coming year?
Better time management for my life as a whole, instead of just the few pockets that I have under control right now.

What would you like to have this year that you didn’t have last year?
Peace. This last year was full of turmoil on almost every front . And not just the regular dumpster fire that is meme’d on the Interwebs, but deeply personal and in my most vulnerable places as well.

What was your biggest achievement of this year?
Had you asked me this six months ago I would have gushed about negotiating a new job here in Arizona. However, uh, that has been one of the worst overall “improvements” of my career and my life. I shall write more about this soon; there is light at the end of the tunnel.

What was your biggest failure?
Letting the sadness win. And sometimes also letting the anger and darkness win. It was a rough year, ya’ll.

Where did you travel this year?
The first half of my 33rd year I was all over the place, which was exhausting and glorious, all at once. (A small sampling: New Mexico (twice), California, Colorado, Washington DC, Montana, Chicago, several trips back to Salt Lake, and visits to Joshua Tree and Sequoia National Parks.) For the last half I have more or less stayed home, and that is glorious and heart-wrenching in its own way.

Do you have a destination in mind for next year?
Yes! We have booked tickets and part of our accommodations for a proper vacation to celebrate our five-year wedding anniversary (which was in November, and/or January, depending on who you ask).

What did you get really excited about?
Vegetables in my backyard, if we have had more than two conversations I have probably mentioned my little plants at least 7 times. Also the women who serve as Supreme Court Justices.

What do you wish you’d done more of?
Finding joy in the people and activities that I know are a salve for my aching heart.

What do you wish you’d done less of?
Worrying. This is two years in a row with this answer, btw.

What was the best book you read?
Oh goodness, I love/hate this question. In the last year I’ve read almost 150 books with MANY 5-star reviews in there. In no particular order (but all non-fiction, because that’s my fave): The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander; Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown; The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot; The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, by Daniel James Brown; Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, by Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik; The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge, by Matt Ridley.

What did you want and get?
A backyard with grass and a new patio and boxes for my little vegetables!

What did you want and not get?
Superficial Item #1: To fit back into my skinny jeans, I’m still working on it.
Superficial Item #2: A wall of bookcases to fill up.
More Honest and Infinitely Harder to Admit Item: happiness or even contentment with my life, my relationships, myself.

What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Several months of temperatures in the low thirties and high twenties; I am not cut out for the nine months of temps over 90 degrees. It makes my brain melt.

What kept you sane?
Long conversations with dear friends, audiobooks to keep me company, wandering around art museums and exhibits, puttering with my plants.

What political issue stirred you the most?
I really don’t know if I can answer this question because I haven’t got 3,728 hours to write in all the details. Which issue? All of them. I have ranted and raved and cheered and spent emotional energy on more political causes in the last 12 months than in the rest of my life combined.

Did you fall in love?
No.

Who did you miss?
Same answer as last year: My people in Salt Lake, my nieces and nephews, siblings, and my glorious rocky mountains.

Did you learn a valuable life lesson this year?
The grass is not always greener elsewhere. That being said, I also firmly believe that all of our choices will not  and can not result in confetti and fireworks and unicorns and solely positive outcomes; sometimes even the most carefully thought out plans–the ones with flowcharts and back-up contingencies–will fail. At that point I have to wallow for a bit, because I am human, not a freaking robot, then pick myself up and get back to work.

Previous birthday posts here: Age 33, Age 32.