“Nobody likes you when you’re… well, you get the idea.”
For the first time in the short history of this blog (and the last time until 2027), my birthday lands on a Tuesday! That’s the day when I post a new blog post each week! So now is really a good time for me to take a break, because there’s no excuses anymore; no one should have to work on their birthday, so why am I writing this stupid blog on my birthday? The answer is, of course, I’m not, and that this is prepared a day or two in advance (well, actually, about four hours in advance, on Monday night). So I’m not really writing anything on my birthday. But I think the idea still stands; I’m going to take a break from writing a blog this week!
Except that’s what I say just about every week, and then I post Spectral Crown. So what gives?
Well, I’ve decided that I really do want to try to get away from posting Spectral Crown whenever I’m tired or busy or don’t feel like I have the time. And this does not have anything to do with the fact that I have about four chapters of Spectral Crown left to post. But anyway, Some weeks, I’ll try to write a shorter article on something that catches my attention. Like, say, the Mario Movie casting. But other weeks, thanks to a great idea from my mom and my brother, I think I’m going to start trying something that I call Photobomb. You see, if you know me well enough, or spend any length of time with me, you know that I take photos. Like, a lot of photos. All the time. It’s kind of an obsession, and not necessarily in a healthy way. For me, photos equal memories. And memories equal a sense of self and progression. I have somehow intrinsically tied that sense of self and/or sense of progression to my daily cognitive functions to the point where I’m not sure how I could untangle one without picking apart the entire fabric of my consciousness. It is, in a word, unhealthy. But, if those photos are going to live on my computer’s hard drive rent-free, I might as well put them to use.
Perhaps I overexaggerate. I don’t hate taking photos of everything I do. It’s more the volume at which I take them. I now have over 100,000 photos (and no, that is not a typo) from the entirety of my existence. Of course, the vast majority of them have appeared in the last five years or so, when I started to treat my phone as an extension of my body. I will never look at 99% of the pictures I take ever again. And while that does make me a little sad, at least I’m not at a stage of OCD where I feel I need to consistently monitor them or something. If it ever gets that bad, I’ll need… medication? Therapy? They don’t help much right now. But that’s beside the point. The point I’m trying to reach here is that, instead of posting Spectral Crown on repeat for all eternity, I’m going to start going back into the vault to dig up some of these photos and share them with you. Like Instagram, except I’m also explaining the context and emotional significance of whatever I dredge up.
I’m thinking maybe this will help me process a bit of why I take these photos. Maybe it will help me come to terms with my own insecurities surround memory and forgetfulness and the apparent need to live forever. Or maybe it will just be an easy way to grab three random photos, slap ’em online with a few paragraphs, and get through another week without a blog-induced meltdown. Who knows, maybe it’ll turn into something really cool? It’s kind of like a time capsule sort of thing, and every time I post it, they’ll all be easily accessible, all in the same place, by clicking on that little blue button at the bottom of each post that says “Photobomb,” right next to where it says “Posted In.” And then I go back and look at them, too!
Whatever this turns out to be, I hope it’s kind of funny, maybe kind of sweet, maybe kind of sad, but most of all, I just hope it’s not boring. But anyway, I think that’s enough explanation out of the way. All you really need to understand it, after all, is that these are photos I took, from any point in my life, and I’m gonna tell you about ’em whenever I get too stressed. Seems simple enough, right? Well, let’s start with something thematic! I’m gonna dig up photos from my last three birthdays. Happy birthday to me!
My 22nd (2020) Birthday Photo Set
Man, I gotta say, what a weird fucking birthday this was. Not only was it a COVID birthday, so I couldn’t really go out and celebrate at the clubs or bars or anything, but it was on a Monday. According to my journal, I even had a test that day. How shitty is that? Ah, but such is the price I pay for getting my 21st Birthday on a Saturday. But anyway, my actual birthday day was pretty low-key; my parents and brother came to Champaign, we went to an pumpkin patch and apple orchard to continue a birthday tradition I’ve had since I was literally like two, my partner Cheyenne and I got dinner at a local fancy Italian place, and I got some gifts and stuff. I got a new hiking backpack and that cool Mario LEGO set, which was neat! The thing I primarily remember from that weekend, besides the pumpkin patch, was my brother and I getting up to certain perspective-altering hijinks a couple days prior and then, uh, crying for three hours and eating an entire sheet of Halloween sugar cookies while Cheyenne downed a bottle of wine in the hallway. Like I said, it was a weird fucking birthday.
By the by, not all of these photos will necessarily be ones I take (though a lot of them will be, for future posts), but I do get a lot of photos of people’s backs, like that first one up there. Just throwing that out there, for whatever it means.
My 21st (2019) Birthday Photo Set
There is so much about my 21st birthday that I could talk about. Just how fucking bonkers of a night it was, how it dramatically altered the course of my life in ways that I’m only now beginning to grasp, and how much fun it is to party like a college kid. Little did we know back then that it would only be about four or five months later before the world was put on high lockdown for the Coronavirus pandemic, but for a few blissful moments in time, the world felt perfect to me. It’s funny, I can point to a handful of birthdays and say that, in those moments, things felt right. This isn’t a sort of “good old days” kind of thing, either; even in the moment, things felt right. I can’t quite explain it; between my 16th and 21st birthdays, I knew someone was smiling down (up?) at me, so to speak. I can’t say things have gotten worse personally since my 21st birthday, although they invariably have declined worldwide, but there was something special about my 21st birthday. Frankly, several key personal moments of development occurred that night, ones beyond just my first legal alcoholic beverage, but there are a few things even I’m not too keen on sharing with the world. At least not yet. I’ll keep those for the vault, but there’s a reason that third photo is still hanging on my wall. It’s corny, but looking back, one night really can change your life. Weird.
My 20th (2018) Birthday Photo Set
I don’t want to end on a downer note, but if I had to categorize my birthdays in a few ways, my 22nd would be the birthday of absurdity, my 21st would be a birthday of perfection, and my 20th would be a birthday of priors. You did read that right, and I will explain; my 20th birthday was my last birthday prior to several things. For one, it my last birthday prior to my grandfather’s death. And if memory serves me right, it was also my last birthday prior to my parent’s announcement of their divorce, something I don’t talk about much on here but something that has been affecting my life almost since the beginning of this blog. Come of think of it, I started this blog around the same time they announced their divorce to my brother and I. Coincidence? Probably; but I’ll think on it. But, on a better thought, this is also the last birthday prior to me really feeling like I knew who I was. I didn’t come into myself as a person until the end of my sophomore year of college, and it wasn’t really until Philmont that I understood my own abilities a bit more. But to a certain minor extent, that formative process began with a class field trip I took to Baraboo, Wisconsin, that started on my 20th birthday, a trip where I made friends of strangers for only the second or third time. You could say this is my last birthday prior to that, too.
I can’t really say how glad I was that my grandfather came to Champaign for my birthday that year. None of us knew it then, but besides maybe Christmas or Easter, it was one of the last times I would see him before he went to the hospital, even though that still wouldn’t come until more than nine months after this. I regret not spending more time with him, a sentiment I’ve echoed before, but at least I got that day. Strange how things that seem minor become more impactful after loss. But that’s something for another day. What I think I remember the most about that birthday lunch was that my family started to sing “Happy Birthday,” while I’m sitting there like a dumbass (because everyone has to sit through that song like a dumbass), and Grandpa just starts taking bites out of the cupcakes that were supposed to be saved until after the song. I don’t know what it was, maybe you had to be there, but it cracked us all up, him just going for it and taking one of those cupcakes mid-song.
Huh, I hadn’t really thought that this would end up becoming a sort of “birthday special,” but I guess it did. Is that self-centered of me? Perhaps. But, then again, this whole damn blog is self-centered, isn’t it? To think that I, of all people, have something worth saying has got to be the one of the most damn arrogant things in the world. But here we are anyway. The curse of the creative, maybe, or just a very nice way of saying “I paid for this website and I can do whatever I want with it.” Doesn’t look much different one way or the other.
But thank you for joining me for this surprisingly emotional first round of Photobomb, or whatever I end up naming this running bit! Just don’t rag on me about this year’s birthday, though, I need to give it some time first! I’ll see you all next week. Hopefully, hmm?
