I often hear that aging should be like fine wine -that you should get better with age. Unfortunately I can’t say anything about the wine. I’ve never had one in my life. But…do I get better with age?
I doubt it… 😀
So, the thing is, exactly last month was my birthday.
I used to feel birthday blues whenever my birthday approaching. The cycle is quite similar every year. I would anticipate the coming of March. And then I would feel nervous when the day was approaching. When the Day finally came, I was like really really confused of what to feel. Should I feel happy? Should I feel grateful? Should I feel sad (because…you know…getting older?)? When I didn’t feel any of those things -because come on birthday is just another Monday or Tuesday or Friday- I would feel soooo bad. Then came the birthday blues.
This year, well, a month ago, when it was my birthday, I surprisingly didn’t feel anything. Not even the slightest blues! Perhaps, it had something to do with me being very busy (just arrived from Bali the previous day), being very travel-ly (went out of town again the day after), and most likely because I was so damn sick that week.
Hubby had planned a birthday gate away since a few months before. It was more like a weekend gate away for everyone. It’d been sometime since the last family trip. As much as I looked forward to the day, I was sooo sick and tired. The good thing was I didn’t have the capacity to feel birthday blues haha… Perhaps I should have asked for an out-of-this-world birthday gift to make me feel better hmmm…
Let’s go back to the birthday blues. One of the things that creates birthday blues is because you are suddenly reminded of your (lack of) accomplishments, of your failures (yep, where should we begin?), of your regrets, of your wrinkles, of your superfluous fat, and of course of your age. We don’t get younger by every birthday, unless of course you are Benjamin Button. In my case, my birthday blues is usually developed with the growing expectation whether I would get a birthday gift or not hahahaha… No. Mine is mostly because I grew up being told that I should feel grateful and blessed when my birthday comes. I suppose it is true. The problem, the big problem, is I usually don’t feel that way. I usually feel birth-DAY is just another Monday or Wednesday or Saturday. Do you know how terrible it is to hear voices in your head telling you to feel grateful but somehow you know that the feeling doesn’t happen today? Do you? Perhaps you don’t.
On the day of my birthday, I usually force myself to write things, either here in my blog or in my journal. It forces me to contemplate. The writing process is usually also agonising. It’s a forced writing after all. Some years the writing was good, other time, they sucked big time. Last month, I didn’t write anything. My excuses are of course being sick and tired and out of town. But, truth be told, I didn’t write because these days, or years, I’ve lost my muse. Look at this blog! How often do I write? Yeah.
The older I get, the more overthinking I become. I feel it so hard to write because of that. I feel that my writing should mature just as I mature with age. Again, that thinking stops me from writing silly. I always take my work seriously, but I seldom took myself seriously in the old days. When I do take myself seriously, I begin to seek approval from people. That’s when ideas stop flowing, writing becomes so dreadful…I can’t find my writing muse again.
My writing muse used to need me sitting alone, daydreaming, unconsciously observing things or people around me. My writing muse used to find me when I was spontaneous, when I couldn’t care less about myself (first and foremost), about what I said, about you, about people, about what people might think of me. Indifference is a bless and ignorance is a bliss.
I found the poster somewhere in the internet saying that I’ve reached that age where my brain went from “you probably shouldn’t say that” to “what the hell, let’s see what happens”. With me, it’s a backward process. I go from the person who used to think ‘what the hell, let’s see what happens’ to ‘I probably shouldn’t say that’. So, this age thing, yeah, it kills my muse.
My God, now I did get delayed birthday blues, didn’t I?!
To each his suff’rings: all are men,
Condemn’d alike to groan,
The tender for another’s pain;
Th’ unfeeling for his own.
Yet ah! why should they know their fate?
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies.
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
‘Tis folly to be wise.
(Thomas Gray, Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College)
