Over time I've had a strange relationship with my birthday, when I was a kid, I was always excited for it, partly because it always coincided with the end of the school year, the last day of school either being the day before or day after my birthday (I always preferred it when it was the day before) but once I turned eighteen I started dreading my birthday. Not because I feared getting older, no, I'm fine with being another year older (and wiser) but I'm not okay with getting older and feeling that I haven't done anything with my life. As my friends from high school started getting married and starting careers, I was still living at home, working a part time job that I hated and producing YouTube videos in my spare time. Not to disparage the YouTube videos, I love making them, but when all I've got to show at twenty-five is a mediocre YouTube channel and no social life, it can be pretty demoralizing.
On my twenty-fifth birthday, I sat in the outdoor dining area of a very nice seafood restaurant, surrounded by my immediate family, and while I enjoyed the meal, I couldn't shake this feeling of dread. Still in the midst of a global pandemic, it seemed as if every job application I sent in for jobs in the film industry (the field that I'd spent four and a half years studying) was ignored or outright rejected, unemployment was almost over and I had nothing to show for spending a year and some change at home. All those writing projects I intended to finish, left unfinished, I was spotty when it came to making videos because of said pandemic, I hadn't seen any of my friends in ages, I drifted apart from most of them throughout high school and college and my closest friend's life keeps him too busy for us to hang out like we used to, all I did every day was exist. And sometimes that's enough, but not when I was turning the same age that my mother was when she married my father, a year before she gave birth to me. My mother was on the cusp of starting a new chapter in her life when she was my age and I was stuck in the mud waiting for a future that may never arrive. And I absolutely hated it.
Contrast that with today, as I sat at a table in a rather nice hibachi restaurant, again surrounded by my immediate family, again enjoying my meal, I finally felt content. What a difference a year could make, I may not have made any further progress on the writing projects and video production is still rather difficult, but I have different reasons for it, reasons that I like a lot more. In November of last year, I started a job as a bookseller for a corporate bookstore that you've probably heard of (but I don't know if I'm allowed to name and I don't want to risk losing that job by naming it) and my life has changed for the better. I've gotten a lot better at interacting with people (having lost the few people skills I had honed over the years during quarantine) and have a lot more friends, sure they're also my co-workers, but I enjoy spending time with them at work and it makes the job, which is already great, even better. I love helping customers find books, I love shelving them, and even the parts of the job that I'm not as fond of can't lessen my enthusiasm for working there. I used to leave the house for my previous job dreading having to walk into that office, but I always leave the house with a smile on my face and a spring in my step now, even if the temperatures have been below zero or nearing a hundred degrees. (And this is measured in Fahrenheit because I'm a filthy American)
I don't know where I'm meant to be in life in five years, or a decade on, will I still be at the bookstore, will I be a famous filmmaker, but I know that where I am right now, at this moment, is exactly where I'm meant to be. Maybe I'm not in the field that I want to be in, but I'm in a far better position to pursue my artistic goals when I have the security of a job that I enjoy and doesn't diminish my creative energies. Plus, with this business having locations across the country, I have the latitude to move to a new location, such as Los Angeles if the winds blow me in that direction, after all, half the entertainment industry is here in New York and the other half is across the country. Ultimately, it feels fantastic and freeing to know that I'm in a place that both values my talents and provides me with a measure of joy every day. It's true what they say, love what you do and you'll never work a day in your life. Hopefully this feeling will endure and I'll no longer have to dread my birthday because I think I'm gonna have a lot more to show for myself in the years to come. Happy Birthday to me!