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.
