aroraborealis

"People are so perplexing. It's like they don't know that pleasure is one of the main reasons to live." -contessagrrl

It's my birthday! Happy birthday to me! But wait! Before you wish me a happy birthday, you have a mission:

I need your help celebrating my birthday. I need you to go into your day with a curious mind, and the intent to do something that gives you pleasure and/or joy, something that makes you laugh, maybe something that scares you a little but makes you happier for having done it. It doesn't have to be big! It could be watching a funny video on youtube, or stopping to smell flowers while you walk around your neighborhood, or taking a bus to a part of town you've never visited. Or it can be huge! It could be telling someone you love them with no expectation of reciprocation, or jumping off the high dive for the first time, or letting yourself love yourself.

Then, once you've done that, you can come back here and wish me a happy birthday, and if you want to tell me about how you treated yourself right today, I'd love to hear that, too.

... you come home to discover that your roommates have built you a (completely awesome) laundry line off the back porch, and in your excitement, you fling your phone off the (second floor) porch, and upon recovery, it turns out the phone is completely fine.

Normally, I have a busy schedule. I work, I play, I hang out with friends and lovers. And interspersed here and there, I get an occasional night off, either planned or unexpected, or an afternoon of down-time when I roll out the yoga mat starkeymonster gave me and stare up at the undersides of the branches and leaves that overhang the back porch at An Undisclosed Location. Normally, I get some mental idle time by chatting with friends online and reading livejournal while recuperating my energy to deal with the world.

The last few weeks, this is less true, because I've been off doing incredibly fun things, including, but not limited to:

hiking much of the way up a mountain, seeing a childhood friend get married and my brother make a remarkably fantastic toast, embarrassing a family member for saying something rude, developing crushes on people who are inappropriately distant from my home, cultivating crushes on people who are inappropriately distant from my home, catching up with friends I don't see often enough, eating amazing produce, envying the growing season in the bay area, beginning to repair a relationship too long laid aside after a breach, seeing mind-bending art, achieving a major goal I set for myself on my last birthday, eating speech-stealingly good food, missing a lot of people, throwing a fun party, feeling stupidly shy, talking to strangers and enjoying it, talking to strangers and loathing it, sleeping less than I ought, thinking about what I'm going to do after grad school, fantasizing, dreaming, laughing, building friendships new and postponed, soaking in hot water, getting dirty, turning 31, dancing, and deeply, deeply loving my life.

Amidst all that, I haven't had a whole lot of down-time, so I'm also really, really tired. I figure I'll be able to recuperate after Burning Man and the first couple of weeks of classes. So, uh, I'll be fit company come, oh, mid-September. Which is just as well, because that's more or less the next free time slot in my calendar, anyway.

This year's people painting bday party was even more successful than last year's! More people showed up, more people painted themselves and each other, and more people got naked. How can I complain. Even the strangers who showed up weren't painful, for the most part. klingonlandlady did some of the most elaborately artistic work, and there were lots of other fun artsy types there. I got shayde to paint me with liquid latex, which was fun. Taking it off wasn't as bad as duct tape, but it's not necessarily something I'd want to do in front of an audience every time. I also got to paint Kim, which was entertaining. It was a big day, what with an early morning to tidy up San and Kai's place in preparation for their return, soapmaking with hawkegirl and klingonlandlady in the morning, and then the party. I slept well last night, but not long, waking up early feeling antsy about the prospect of moving and needing to find another roommate. I hope that once I start packing, I'll feel better. And I have some roommate leads, so with luck, that'll pan out soon. It's a warm night to be back in my apartment after 3 weeks of a/c, but the fan seems to be cooling things off nicely enough that I'll get some sleep. And now that it's August, the end is in sight, so it's a lot more bearable. Back to work full time tomorrow. Time to start buying lotto tickets or something!