Every birthday is worth celebrating.
A moment of joy in an increasingly complicated world.
Okay, it was a low-key birthday. It wasn't a big milestone, no fuss needed to be made.
I'm currently in Echuca, staying with my parents. Every Friday night, they have fish and chips with their neighbours - so this week that included a birthday cake for me. Perfect.
I also got a call from my sister, messages from friends, and my nephews made some hand-drawn cards for me. Lovely. Low-key, but lovely.
The world feels like an increasingly complicated place. Whatever your politics or your point of view, there are wars being fought, climate-driven disasters, political and social upheaval, and economic hardship.
Perhaps it's just because I'm getting older that everything feels a bit overwhelming, perhaps this is what life has always felt like but the passing years reveal the ever-increasing complexity that we're all trying to navigate.
Being able to celebrate another birthday feels like a blessing - however low-key those celebrations may be. To have a cake baked in your honour, candles lit, songs sung - to be able to share a moment of celebration and joy with friends and family, that's a blessing and it's something that I don't take for granted.
A low-key birthday, but one that I will treasure as a moment of celebration and joy.
Snowballing
My friend Ming - who I podcast with on Snowballing - is not good at remembering birthdays. He likes to celebrate his own but has less interest in the birthdays of other people.
Our recording schedule is fairly erratic, and it just worked out that our November episode was going to be recorded on 24 November - my birthday. I knew that Ming wouldn't have made the connection and I wasn't going to make it easy for him.
I passively-aggressively made the podcast's quiz about celebrities born on 24th November and he eventually got the hint that he'd forgotten my birthday.
He's consistent, you've got to give him that.