I feel like I have a tradition of posting on my birthday by now? (Like... twelve birthdays later.) And I have traditionally used it for taking stock, deciding where I am and where I'm going and where I'd like to be. (Nothing constant but growth; nothing solid, even land; etc.) But twenty-six was a big year - a huge year, the biggest of years - and whatever this year brings, I hope it'll be quiet. I was born at a few minutes past midnight, dawn Indian time, so I have been twenty-seven nearly a day; here is what has happened so far.
-Shim gave me a number of birthday presents, one of which was a book - a travel guide for South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland;
-My colleagues gave me a birthday PIE (very small; lemon meringue; delicious and so sweet of them);
-![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
such_heights and purplefringe gave me a birthday CAKE!;
-Whilehappydork and forthwritten wrote me birthday DINOSAUR PORN;
-But they all sang the song to me! And I blew out invisible candles, and cut the cake.
-A lot of you sent me loving, thoughtful birthday messages, full of kindness and experience;
-Andsoupytwist wrote me a birthday POME! Oh my goodness, it was so wonderful.
-And in the morning, I told this story on Twitter, but I was running late this morning. I ran for a train that did not come, and did not come, and did not come, and then was coming to platform 1, then platform 4, then platform 5, and then platform 4 again. And a train did drift onto platform 4, but the people from FCC came running down and shouted, "This is not the King's Cross train! This is the train to BIRMINGHAM!"
I was thinking, the Birmingham train looks nice, Birmingham is nice. There are trains to Liverpool every hour from Birmingham-. I have been feeling a little anxious lately - not in the terrible way, maybe, but in the sense that there is a lot of good in my life right now, a lot of things and demands on my time that are good, but take time, and it's hard shaking them down so they all fit. I figured it out in the late afternoon and rang up and said, look, it's a lovely birthday I'm having, really it is, but I think I want to come home, for a little while. My parents said, we'll pick you up from the station. We'll make dinner reservations.
And... well, anxiety aside. And it can go sit aside, because this is just winter, just foggy frosted winter (and even now, beautiful things: even now, fog and frost over Camden Lock) and that's the sort of brain I have and here we are. Here we are, and I am twenty-seven, and not just married but with a partner, which I don't say lightly, and that too possibly the kindest human being there is; surrounded by friends most everywhere I go (South Africa! Lesotho! Possibly not Swaziland!); and I have found the great intellectual passion of my life and the work I do every day makes it more accessible to everyone. And I've taken up Hindi grammar classes, and my teacher is strict and yells at me for making mistakes in grammatical gender and case markers, because she thinks I should get it right. How wonderful is that.
It has been a wonderful birthday. Thank you all.
-Shim gave me a number of birthday presents, one of which was a book - a travel guide for South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland;
-My colleagues gave me a birthday PIE (very small; lemon meringue; delicious and so sweet of them);
-
such_heights and purplefringe gave me a birthday CAKE!;-While
happydork and forthwritten wrote me birthday DINOSAUR PORN;-But they all sang the song to me! And I blew out invisible candles, and cut the cake.
-A lot of you sent me loving, thoughtful birthday messages, full of kindness and experience;
-And
soupytwist wrote me a birthday POME! Oh my goodness, it was so wonderful.-And in the morning, I told this story on Twitter, but I was running late this morning. I ran for a train that did not come, and did not come, and did not come, and then was coming to platform 1, then platform 4, then platform 5, and then platform 4 again. And a train did drift onto platform 4, but the people from FCC came running down and shouted, "This is not the King's Cross train! This is the train to BIRMINGHAM!"
I was thinking, the Birmingham train looks nice, Birmingham is nice. There are trains to Liverpool every hour from Birmingham-. I have been feeling a little anxious lately - not in the terrible way, maybe, but in the sense that there is a lot of good in my life right now, a lot of things and demands on my time that are good, but take time, and it's hard shaking them down so they all fit. I figured it out in the late afternoon and rang up and said, look, it's a lovely birthday I'm having, really it is, but I think I want to come home, for a little while. My parents said, we'll pick you up from the station. We'll make dinner reservations.
And... well, anxiety aside. And it can go sit aside, because this is just winter, just foggy frosted winter (and even now, beautiful things: even now, fog and frost over Camden Lock) and that's the sort of brain I have and here we are. Here we are, and I am twenty-seven, and not just married but with a partner, which I don't say lightly, and that too possibly the kindest human being there is; surrounded by friends most everywhere I go (South Africa! Lesotho! Possibly not Swaziland!); and I have found the great intellectual passion of my life and the work I do every day makes it more accessible to everyone. And I've taken up Hindi grammar classes, and my teacher is strict and yells at me for making mistakes in grammatical gender and case markers, because she thinks I should get it right. How wonderful is that.
It has been a wonderful birthday. Thank you all.