Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

I've got all these things I mean to write. Ideas that could make interesting essays ifwhen I have time to flesh them out. My extremely important opinions ('important' because they're mine, of course) on the Issues Of The Day. Upcoming stuff I want y'all to know about. Recent stuff a few of you might care about (and everyone else will excuse the triviality of 'cause hey, it's a blog and people do that). The stuff that's been troubling me that I should figure out how to ask for advice/help on. Links to niftycool stuff other people have linked to or I've stumbled across while looking for something else.

And somehow I never seem to get any credit for these great ideas and fine intentions ... just because I, uh, *cough*, haven't acually written them. Whoops. Some I put off because I'm not feeling well that day. Some I put off because they're difficult (or because I want to write them carefully so as to get my point across to people who disagee with me without insulting them or pissing them off, or ask my question without being lazy or sounding stupid ... which are two of the ways a journal entry idea can be dificult). Or I do start writing them, and the words look sillier outside of my own head than they seemed when they were just in my head, and I scrap that idea for an entry. Some I don't feel I can 'let' myself write until I've written More Important Unwrittenyet Things first ... or because I don't feel I should be writing them when I've got Things More Urgent Than Blogging At All on my to-do list.

And then my brain locks up from indecision-paralysis or not-sure-where-to-start or fear of not writing things right or ... uh, the stuff that's been on my mind a lot that I should figure out how to ask for help with ... and I wind up killing time I can't afford on ProcrastinationThings, so none of the More Important stuff that's 'in the way' of writing gets done either. Yeah, this is a Bad Pattern. I need to break out of it, or at least poke my head outside it, or a few fingers, or a leg, once in a while.

Let's start with the embarassingly overdue thanks for how my birthday went (two and a half weeks ago). Now, I knew I have a lot of friends, and believe me, I feel blessed by that, but I didn't realize I still had so many "show up on a weeknight with less than a week notice" friends, after (unintentionally) acting a little hermit-like for the past few years! I did count the chairs before I picked that restaurant, and it did occur to me that many people could show up, but my expectations were lower. I must say -- and ought to have said two weeks ago -- that I am grateful for the turnout and was really glad to see so many of you, especially the too-many of you that I hadn't seen in a long time.

But there were more friends in one place than I could have decent conversations with in one evening, and I felt like I was neglecting people -- again, including some I hadn't seen in Far Too Long -- who were farther away from where I sat. Having so many familiar faces gathered around me was wonderful, but now I need to start doing what I said I'd wanted to: start seeing people (whether you were at my birthday or not) just to see y'all and catch up, without a Big Event to remind me to do so. And in smaller groups so I can actually talk to everyone. (I need more good days, health-wise, too.)

I suck at that, lately. I don't like that fact.

Round-number birthdays are often presented as milestones of a sort -- I mean, I suppose every birthday is a milestone (okay, a 585-million-mile marker), but multiples-of-ten seem to be look-backwards/look-ahead occasions in our culture at least, and later ones are portrayed as times to Notice One's Mortality and/or notice the last decade's accumulation of effects of aging. Which is not to say that everybody -- or even, perhaps, most people -- are actually thinking along those lines on their later decade-birthdays, but there are a bunch of memes (perhaps this is a better place for the word 'tropes'; I'm no sure) about how people are assumed to be thinking, what fictional characters must be feel if their sory includes such a birthday, recurring themes on birthday cards, etc..

Funny thing ... well, unfunny ... kinda unsettling ... Although I've been noticing aging and What My Body Won't Do Anymore for an unfairly long time (fibromyalgia robbed me of a fraction of my youth and a bigger chunk of my middle age, giving me the limitations, lack-of-stamina, pains, etc. of someone much older than I am) -- although I've been noticing those aspects of age and health for a long time, my attention wasn't really drawn to those things in any special way by crossing another decade-boundary. Instead, I noticed what has been happening to some of my friends (and it probably would've been more of you if I'd mingled better and gotten to really talk to more of you). Another friend has had a stroke. Another friend has battled cancer (discovered when she nearly bled to death because of it).

Perhaps hearing this news from people I hadn't seen for so long had an impact on how it affected me. Perhaps hearing about the medical misfortunes of more than one friend at a time did so as well. Not the first of my friends to suffer a stroke, or cancer, or a heart attack or any of a bunch of other alarming medical events; not the first time I've seen friends start having more trouble getting around due to chronic illness or permanent injury or just plain age, either ... But that evening I suddenly realized that as accustomed as I'd gotten to the fact that I'm aging and losing a step and having the long-term odds of various bad-things catch up to me, and however much I should have realized my friends aren't frozen in time either (you'd think that attending a few friends' funerals in the past would be a clue), I still found myself startled and disturbed by the realization that "so-and-so almost died", that people I love are starting to have to adapt to some effects of age that fibro had long ago imposed on me, that not all of my friends are still the unbreakable, immortal, all-the-time-in-the-world youths I keep remembering them as.

I figured out years ago that between a couple of chronic illnesses and not having any money (a result of chronic illness), I'm not likely to live to be very old -- nor will I ever win back the vitality and robustness illness stole from me. I can't say that I'm thrilled with that situation, but it doesn't freak me out. Realizing that time and nature are going to get at the people I love, too (though I hope all y'all still live longer), kinda freaked me out a little.

(Yeah, yeah, I just made everybody else's health problems all about how they affect me. There's some 'meta' here, but also some self-centeredness. Can I use "birthday" as an excuse for the latter?)

The ghost-of-health-crises-yet-to-come threw me off balance (mostly afterward when I had more time to analyze what it was), but was not enough to spoil my enjoyment of the company of so many friends. I noticed the start of my reaction at dinner, and it seemed worth writing down later, but most of the evening I was just enjoying having so many friends around me right then, rather than obsessing about what might happen tomorrow. Even now, as dramatically morbid as the preceeding section of this entry probably sounds, it's a nagging footnote in my recollection of the evening, one that bore closer examination later but not the main point I remember. The important bits are the smiles, laughter, hugs, massage, ideas, the feeling connected.

I am blessed. I am lucky. And I know it. It would be easy to feel proud that so many of you came -- to feel important or something -- but I mostly just feel incredibly lucky to have so many cool, interesing, great people in my life. Even after not really holding up my end for several years, with a lot of you. Thank you. Thank you for being such interesting people, and thank you for being here. (That goes for those of you who weren't literally there that night, too!)

Thanks.