Today is my 26th birthday. I feel the same as I always do on my birthday. A little anxious. A little sad. Incredibly attention starved. 

I normally spend this day thinking about what I learned in the last year. But when I woke up, all I could think about was how much I didn't learn. Or rather, how many things I'm holding on to. How many things are holding me back. Here's the list of preoccupations I'm letting go of in my 26th year:

1. I have this memory of secretly letting my sister's Iguana off of its leash, and it never coming back. Did that really happen? Was I monster? Am I still?
   

2. The %n trick was mean.
   

3. Why did I spend so much of 2009 watching boys play video games? That sucked so bad!
   

4. And you know what else sucked so bad? Every year of elementary school my teachers made me apply for gifted and talented, and every year I didn't get in!
   

5. Once I was at a sleepover and borrowed a cordless phone and dialed RadioDisney over and over for an hour. When I finally got through, I asked them to play The Way You Make Me Feel. They never did! And then everyone at the party thought I lied!
   

6. Speaking of Radio Disney, I can't believe Sophia F got to burp live on the air. And I can't believe she didn't make a bigger deal about it afterwards. I was on a British radio station last year because I accidentally went viral and I find a reason to bring it up every day, if I can. Now, for example. Maybe this should also be number 7.
   

7. See above.
   

8. For a long time I hated Taylor Swift and everyone thought I was dramatic. Now everyone is on board too and I don't hate her as much! Maybe she deserves a second chance!
   

9. I'm a contrarian. I always have been. It's so dumb. It's definitely why I am reconsidering my opinion of Taylor Swift and It's also definitely why I've never seen the movie Up. I'm gonna work on it, I guess.
   

10. I cannot believe I let someone cut bangs on me in 2005 and then kept cutting bangs on me for 3 years.
    

11. In 12th grade, this mean girl told me I had a mustache, so I got it waxed. The wax burned me, and then I had a burn mustache, which is MUCH worse. I think about it a lot.
    

12. I should have gone out more in college.
    

13. In second grade, my mom got me this sweet blue suede pearl snap from Limited Too and I lost it. I miss that shirt still.
    

14. I am really funny, and I should have more twitter followers, and I am bitter.
    

15. I have this recurring nightmare that I take out my retainer, and all my teeth are attached to it instead of my mouth. And then I go find my mom, who is waiting in a very long line, and she gets angry at me for losing my teeth.
    

16. I still have my blankie from when I was a child. It's a torn up piece of a twin sized sheet. What am I supposed to do with this as I get even older? I can't get rid of it. Should I put it in a shadow box? Is that even weirder?
    

17. I have a constant fear that someone is going to ask me to fill in a map of the United States, and I won't be able to, and it'll ruin me. I tried to learn all the states! Missouri just will! Not! Stick!
    

18. I think I'm done trying to like Tomatoes
    

19. I have weird toes. They're super tiny and sorta cartoony. 26 is the year I stop apologizing for my tiny nails when I get a pedicure.
    

20. Humpty Dumpty is a children's story about a man falling to his death. Wtf?

I wanted to get to 26 things, but the premise of this list is already so tenuous that I couldn't do it. Maybe I'll update throughout the year. Probably I won't. Regardless, happy birthday to me. I hope my 26th year is carefree as hell.

So I said I'd post something every month. Then I didn't. I skipped July. In August I did 30 days of drawing. Then I skipped September.

There's not really an excuse. One blog post a month is incredibly manageable. It's not like I'm writing theses or tomes. My last post was a list of imaginary parties I'd skip to sleep! But even though I pretty much only write jokes, I take it somewhat seriously. I want them to be funny and new and actually good. 

Sometimes my standards for "funny and new and actually good" are too high. Sometimes they're not really standards at all, they're just a list of reasons not to write. Sometimes they're stifling. After all, I'm only a writer for the attention. 

Recently, one of my Creative Directors asked me if I write every day. I said no. He said I should try. I said "great idea!" and then I did not try. Not that day or the next day either. But then I was bored, so I decided to try. I wrote a haiku about my water bottle. Then I wrote a haiku about every single thing on my desk. Here's a sample:

Fitbit

Getting to 10k

Is really NBD

My pants still don't fit

Easy Mac

Easy Mac 'n Cheese

In my second drawer always

You would fuck me up

Anti-Phishing Certificate

Don’t click the spam links

IT is tricking you, duh.

Can’t reel me in, bitch!

I actually wrote about 15. I wrote one about the Paddington Bear my mentor gave me for basically no reason but that I've kept on my desk for 3 years and 3 jobs anyway. I wrote about my empty lunch Tupperware. I wrote about my headphones. Several about messy stacks of paper. They were silly but they were fun and I felt better. 

But then I got tired of writing haikus, so after my long 2 day streak of writing every day, I stopped writing for approximately 20 days. And then today I decided to start again. Not with haikus, but with limericks. This time about the contents of my backpack.

Vyvanse

A bottle of a drug called Vyvanse

Helps me do things, like water the plants

My ADHD

Does not control me

Thanks to the concentration this grants

Bills Bills Bills

Like 12 crumpled up unpaid bills

Ironic, because of those pills.

Don't worry, I'll pay 'em

I just checked. The grand sum?

Twelve dollars. Incompetence kills!

Snacks

A lot of snacks that I just won't eat

Mostly, they're just not a good treat.

I don't want a raisin

I'd rather be grazin'

On some sour candy so sweet.

Keys

The keys to my Brooklyn apartment

Tucked into the small front compartment.

This rhyme scheme was bold,

Nonetheless, behold:

I’ll finish by using “department”

I wrote 7 more of these. Some of them were funny. Some of them were sort of bleak? All of them made me want to clean out my backpack, which I won't do until next time I want to procrastinate writing, I guess. I spent way more time trying to wrestle with this squarespace template than I did writing the poems and this blog post combined. But at least I did it. Maybe tomorrow I'll write a sonnet. Most likely, I won't write anything. But there's always the day after that!

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