Nate Knows Nada

It’s my third 29th birthday today.

I’m never sure how to regard birthdays. I feel weird asking people to make a big fuss over me, but I still like the attention on some level. But I’ve been less reticent this year, perhaps for living in Winthrop, to tell people that it’s my day.

I was asked recently what I want, not just for my birthday, but in reference to my relationships with other people. I don’t quite know. It’ll be lovely to get some presents from BF and friends and family, but I can’t think of any material goods that you could give me that would make me particularly happy. I think, in fact, that I’m not particularly good at expressing my positive desires — I can tell you what I don’t want, for my birthday and from others, more easily than I can tell you what I want.

With age is supposed to come wisdom. Mostly what I notice is that I can see how much I didn’t know when I was younger and how much more I think I see now, which leads me to believe that there’s plenty more to learn from life. By proportion, I’m guessing I really don’t know very much yet. but at least the curve does not seem as steep (although you should talk to me in a few years to see how wrong I was).

I’m not unhappy to be my age. Just unsure how to mark the passage of time meaningfully (I can have one meaningful day a year, right?).

Anyway, I did have a lovely weekend, spent in Chicago. Well, it was lovely once I finished conferencing. Spring has spring there, and the city felt alive in a way that I haven’t gotten to see much of yet here in Boston. I spent time with some political scientist friends in Hyde Park, where I took this picture (of the Oxbridgean University of Chicago). I need to go back to Chicago when I’m not there for a conference, so that I have more time to hang out with Andrew and Emily (who always has really good ideas for my academic work besides being similarly crazy to me). Also, our friend Alan, who’s just left the monastery and is heading back to Chicago. Plenty of couches to crash on, especially at a time when I don’t have to present a paper or talk about the merits of other people’s papers.

Listening to: Morning Theft from the album “Sketches (For My Sweetheart The Drunk)” by Jeff Buckley

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This entry was posted on Monday, 24 April 2006 at 10:36 pm and is filed under Day2Day. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.