Post Birthday Journal

First off, Thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday yesterday. Then Thanks to for the +80 I'll be putting them to good use soon, hopefully. My birthday was very very...alright. I had a few friends over paid a visit to another friend, had some fast food, hung out. Nothing special but hey not bad for a birthday on a Tuesday.

For those of you that don't know, I'm 24 now. Every year around my birthday I reflect on how I'm different from the me I was a year ago, what I've gone through and what I've learned. Last year at my birthday was one of the lowest points in my life for reasons I'd rather not get into. A lot of things got worse for me, but it lead to a period of getting better, healing and learning, 2012 has been an improvement for me. I've been on what I like to call a "steady systematic decline"(which is a lyric I pulled from a NIN song) for the previous three years. Being in a better place now that I was by my birthday the previous year is something I really needed. I think its changed my outlook on life in a more profound way than it probably should. I'm finally starting to feel optimistic again. Where I stand now, regardless of the path I take, things stand to get better from here. That's not to say things still can't get worse, but that's possible at any point during our lives. People like to say "it could be worse" which I find incredibly unhelpful thinking because concerning ourselves with how things could get worse is counter productive. Concerning one's self with how the situation could and will improve is the only way that it will. Therefore, I like to add "it could be better as well."

We like to reflect during the end of the year on New years, which is understandable. I find it more suiting to reflect over the past year from birthday to birthday. After all, that's when the year started for you all those years ago. Your birthday is your personal new years. I look at where I am and I can smile. I have more friends now(a few enemies as well, which I can honestly laugh about), I'm a little wiser and more experienced than I was, I've discovered so much new music this year, and that for me is big.

Overall, my situation is better than it was. If this is the start of a trend then its a trend I'd gladly welcome, as opposed to the previous one.

A few of my friends here(I won't name names) have been going through rough times as well. The advice I would give to them now is to keep going and to realize that to experience the good in our lives we must know some bad first. "Destruction leads to a very rough road but it also breeds creation."~Anthony Kiedis Red Hot Chilli peppers-Californication  The world can be tough and the lives we strive for are a long time coming, but think about it, what would achieving anything mean to us if it was all easy? What would we appreciate if life wasn't hard.  I'm now what I would consider to be my mid 20's, for our generation, there's a lot of us not getting anywhere we want to be with our lives. If you feel like you're stuck, you're not alone. I may not be much closer to my over all goals in life, but I'm alive, I have friends, I've got MOCing and music, I'm not homeless or in jail, and I've got a stable internet connection. These are the things that I look to to try and find a good outlook on things and a reason to wake up in the morning, my advice to my friends is to do the same. Most of them have more going on for them anyways. For those things I mentioned, the things I've accomplished, and what learned through having gone through the things I went through, I'm very grateful for the past year of my life.

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