A few years ago I invited a bunch of my friends to a bar to celebrate my birthday. Somewhat unknown to me at the time, a few of my friends weren’t exactly friends with each other. While nothing too terribly bad happened, I felt like I was in a position of awkward conflict mediator. Since then I basically vowed to not do anything for birthday except with my closest friends. That has been going well, for the most part.
Last year Keith offered to take me to a hockey game. The same few small people were invited and all I had to do was choose where we were having dinner. That part was kind of awful for me. Most people have the mentality of, “it’s my birthday, I’m choosing what I want.” I suffer from being a people pleaser. I will almost always put other people’s enjoyment before my own. So for me to pick a restaurant involved much agonizing. I poured over all the menus, contemplating if there were enough options that everyone could find something they would enjoy. It was kind of a nightmare and more stress than it should have been. I understand and realize this is ridiculous, but it’s who I am.
I definitely prefer not to have to do any of the planning. However, on the other end I hate the idea of a surprise party. When an ex-girlfriend asked me if she could make our relationship Facebook official (ugh), I told her as long as she promised to never throw me a surprise party. I warned that if it ever happened I would turn around and walk away. I would just straight up leave all the guests to party without their guest of honor. I can’t really pinpoint why, but a surprise party just does not appeal to me. So let this be a warning to all of you. I will leave any party thrown for me without my knowledge.
I think this year I did my birthday the best way. First, the Broncos threw me a parade on my actual birthday. That’s fun to pretend a million people gathered just for you. But since I don’t like that kind of attention, I let the team ride the fire trucks, and roll down the middle of the street. Then the following weekend was the release of a movie I was super excited to see. I was going to see it no matter what and sent a message to my closest friends and basically said I’m seeing this movie no matter what, but it’d cool if you wanted to come with. It was incredibly low-key and exactly how I like it.
So this post is just to say thank you to everyone who made this birthday pretty great. And also to make my surprise party preferences known.
For All The Unheard 