It was my birthday this week. I normally hate and despise my birthday. Last year, I booked a holiday to Portugal to get away from everyone so I didn’t have to do anything for it. This year I did no such thing. I liked that and it’s a good tactic but I didn’t repeat the "tradition" and didn’t do anything this year. If you do something only once can it be a tradition? Going away on my birthday feels like a fine tradition even though I have only done it once. But anyways… I didn’t do it this year… Too expensive, I just stayed home. Just basically doing things I would normally do. My friends often want to "do something". I know it’s a silly thing to complain about, "Oh no, you have people that love you, boo hoo". But… why do something special? Like a normal day with friends, a meal, a few drinks… any time it happens it’s good. Why not just do that.

"Doing Something" creates a level of expectation, I’ve found the thing that kills most experiences for me is expectation. High expectations have made movies less enjoyable, it’s made meals taste bad, and it’s made birthdays shit. Oh god. I just remembered something. I think I need to apologise to one of my exes. She’s literally one of the nicest, most generous people and she tried to create the most amazing birthday for me and I was a miserable shit as is (was?) tradition for my birthday. That word again… tradition. Being a miserable piece of shit is way more of a tradition than going away as it is (was?) since it happened every year.

I was forced into having a birthday party once. I invited all of my closest friends. It was a fucking nightmare. 5 different groups of people that never met, sat round a long table, none of the groups even tried to speak to anyone outside their group. I barely spoke to any of them trying to make sure everyone was happy and I used my entire social battery by the end of the evening. I don’t think I will do that ever again.

Anyways… in these last few years I’ve had a few birthday’s that I’ve enjoyed. I can think of maybe three now and, other than the travelling, they have all just been things I normally do with the people I normally do them with.

Also! Thank you to the handful of people that follow and like on instagram! Thank you to the people on reddit who are upvoting my comics! It’s nice to know that people are enjoying it even if it’s just a handful of you.