Birthday Blog ’24

After 45 years on this planet, I should have plenty to say about the human condition.

I explain as much in my monthly newsletter, The Human Condition. Subscribe today.

What life lessons have I learned? Where are we going? What future awaits us?

I’m no psychic, and my uncanny inability to pick winning lotto numbers speaks for itself. I’ve learned there are good days and bad. There are always opportunities for second chances. Old habits die hard. It all catches up with you. You can’t please everyone. A penny saved is a penny earned. Taxation is theft—two birds in the bush, and so on.

It scares me to think of all the unfinished business if I were gone tomorrow. I’d be completely unprepared. All my photos and files, my unfinished novel, my screenplays and music recordings, my collection of retro video games, records, and other worldly possessions wouldn’t mean a thing. Someday far in the future, these possessions won’t mean a thing anyway, but I’m quite attached to them.

We should accomplish as much as we can while we’re here despite all obstacles. For now, I’m deeply thankful for another year and for the life I’m still trying to build.

Through it all, I’ve learned that Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 has not aged well, which I predicted some years ago. Why pick on Paul Blart? What has that movie ever done to me? It’s an easy target that doesn’t hold a candle to the first one.

Birthday Memories

In previous birthday blogs, I’ve discussed my childhood dream of having a McDonald’s birthday party. Nothing would be more exciting than donning a paper hat, gorging on cheeseburgers, and breakdancing with Ronald McDonald & friends in the middle of the restaurant.

These days, even a Pizza Hut birthday party would do.

I recall my birthday last year in Kuwait, nearing the end of a 9-month deployment. The day was uneventful as expected, but I still received a cake and card from my team and even some fanfare from back home. Every bit helped.

Sometimes, we’d prefer our birthday to pass unnoticed, even by Father Time himself, but that’s just neurotic. It’s important to feel acknowledged and even celebrated. Otherwise, what’s the point? One surprising revelation I’ve learned in years of gained insight and wisdom is how some painful memories never really go away. I guess it depends on the person. I’m a dweller of the past, an emotional masochist.

Born in the USA

I was born in the dawn of a new era, the 1980s. Nostalgia aside, I still consider it the best decade of the 20th century, perhaps in all of human history. Did they have Ghostbusters in the Middle Ages? I rest my case.

1979, the year of my birth, was a time of heightened global conflict. The Cold War was well underway, the Iranian Revolution ushered in the ruling Ayatollahs of their current terror state, Jimmy Carter was President, and Pink Floyd released their landmark double album, The Wall.

Somewhere in all this late-’70s madness, an irritable baby was born in a lone hospital in the desert of Yuma, AZ. His parents named him Raymond after his grandfather, a Navy WWII Veteran. But he would regularly go by his middle name Shawn. I was told I peed on the doctor, my statement against the status quo as a rabble-rousing infant.

I’d love to recount more, but I’m ready to cash in my birthday freebies. RaceTrac sent me a coupon for a free Swirl World Cup, and there’s more where that came from. This year, as always, I remain grateful, hopeful, and optimistic.

Free ice cream can have that effect on a person.