Coincidental Arbitrary Astrological Position Day

To risk making habit of reflecting only upon the annuity of occasion (and to further commit to my calendar-led posting schedule), I have something to say on the matter of birthdays. To be specific, my birthday, which, in its own pleasantly demure and uneventful way, was today.
     "Many happy returns of the day!" is something I would say if my pomposity knew no temper, which, as it happens, it does not. And so it is good and right and pleasurable to recognise that I have successfully completed my twenty-second fulfilment of Earth's sidereal period.¹ Earth and its many individual inhabitants have, as a matter of course, largely outdone me in this regard. On any but my own immediate scale, this really stands as no great achievement; and, in fact, the methods of my success can be summed to little more remarkable than the recommended dose of food, sleep, sanity² and good, old-fashioned luck I have acquired by chance.
     Woop - and to a further extent - woop!
     To this end, I have resolved to consider any annual recurrence of a given day a celebration not of survival (remarkably difficult as I may have underplayed) but of time-keeping.
     Time, doing what it is so very good at, has moved on, and, as I have been led to believe, so should we all. Pip pip!
     So I'm moving on. A new year. A new day. A new start. Cut all ties! Sever all bonds! Strike out into the untold and unready with every fibre of spirit set to make in this new future's new challenges, new experiences, new ties, new bonds, new friends, new songs, new new new new new new new. Jamais vu. Until next the day returns and, finding myself tied down again, I shall resolve to move on and on and on and on. Take it off. Put it on. And on and on and on anon.
     Forgive me my babbling, but these false starts for new parts is getting a little old. A bit like me, really. And to examine my position: half-adult, half-student, half-writer, half-teacher, half-dependent, half-made, half-dressed, I'm really struggling to see where this new start is meant to, you know, begin. With everything in halves, any resolution stumbles across the indefinite, and I'm left feeling a tad lost in my trajectory, like a splintering cannonball shot from a misaligned trebuchet.
     I know where I am, and I know where I've been. Two out of three's not bad, right? Isn’t that enough to comment on the year without having to get caught up in all that pesky future business?
     This is all entirely not what I want to talk about today. I apologise for the preramble. What I want to talk about is the following question: “So how does it feel to be *insert age here*?”
     This question, to put it quite simply, is complete bunk of the highest bunkititty.³ No one, in the history of human communication, young or old, genius or twihard has ever answered that question with anything other than “I don’t know, really – ‘bout the same” or “Guh-huh-uh!”.
     There isn’t some magic, fairytale transformation that happens at midnight each year that makes you a twenty-two year old with a whole new set of feelings, ideas, opinions and characteristics. The closest thing to being newly twenty-two years old is twenty-one years, three hundred and sixty-five days old. It’s as if one’s birthday is supposed to come as a surprise, sneaking up on you out of nowhere to shock you into a new age. Seriously – I’ve spent twenty-two years preparing for this. I’ve pretty much got it sorted in my head. It’s okay. I’m all right.
     Please, for the sake of all that is minutely less irritating in the world, don’t be the insufferable barstool who ask that question. You’ll only alienate your friends, disappoint your family, mildly inconvenience your colleagues, and passive-aggressively turn sour your sexual relationships.
     Next time you go to ask someone how it feels to be *insert age here*, stop, slap yourself thrice about the head, apologise for the oddity, then proceed to ask something with a scintilla of remote thought. “What days will you remember of the last year?” “What good things do you think you have done?” “What have you gained?” “Where did you go?” “Is there any cake left?” And, as it turns out, these are jolly good questions to ask most days.
     Many happy returns of the day to ... well ... everyone.


¹ Look it up.
² Debatable.
³ Yes, I did just say ‘titty’.