It's My Birthday Today

So far I have:

*slept in
*gone to yoga at Namaste in Rockridge
*enjoyed Blue Bottle Coffee at Bittersweet
*been treated to brunch at Venus by Rebecca

I am now considering going running, since I am still wearing my exercise clothes and since that sure was a lot of lemon curd I ate with my pancakes. I am also considering the fact that, well, it's my birthday.

I was reading in the Chronicle yesterday about the newfound voices developing among "young" voters as the political scene grows evermore exciting in this country. Would you like to know how old the "young" voters are? They are 18-34 years of age, the Chronicle says.

What does that mean? Do I no longer get to claim the adjective of "young" to describe my adulthood? Am I just a plain old adult now? Funny...it sure doesn't feel that way.

This is what my adult life is like right now: no full-time job, no home to call my own, no partner, no family. This is about the least adult-like I've ever been if one applies the conventional definition of the word. And, looking back on birthdays of my past, there are many in which my life was much more traditionally adult-y than it is now. Example: almost everything was different than it is now when I turned twenty-six. I was a full-time graduate student with a full-time job to which I commuted seventy miles round trip each day. I had a car and a house and a partner and a pet hamster and a hipster life in the city and way more money (not THAT that much, but way more than now for sure) and I felt very differently about things than I do today, more than half a decade later. So maybe I am just constructing my adulthood in backwards order? I don't know.

Regardless, it is my birthday and I feel quite accomplished to have been alive this long, to have come this far. Looking back there are things that make me indescribably joyous and things that make me heartachingly sorrowful and perhaps most importantly there are many, many things of which I am very proud. So, happy birthday to me :)