birthday angst + self portraits
on celebrating the last birthday of my 20s
turning 29 🍰
i thought about doing something for my birthday this year, the idea crossing my mind that maybe i would actually plan something and bring people together. in the weeks leading up to it, i started getting texts from friends, telling me that my birthday was coming soon, and was i doing anything for it? no! i responded back, though the asks lingered in my mind, and i wondered if maybe i should just book karaoke the week of, and go with the few friends in the city who had asked. there was an added pressure to do something on the day of, because my birthday fell on a saturday this year, already a day off. but as the day grew closer and the weather stayed cold and the tasks to attend to didn’t magically resolve themselves, i decided, no.
i have consistently felt a sort of angst around my birthday, though the angst has manifested itself in different ways. in the days leading up to it this year, i would wake up in the mornings anxiously wondering if it was my birthday, stressed because i still hadn’t decided what to do for it. it’s a first world problem to be worrying about this, i know! and yet, here it looms. it’s the combination of 1) getting older, each added year and climbing age count saddling on more expectations,1 and 2) the concern of what to do for it. i had a joint birthday party at an ice skating rink with a friend in grade school, and when it came time for the guests to choose a team, no one chose to be on mine, and this incident so traumatised me that in all years following that i have almost never planned anything for myself again. (im sorry, im sensitive and dramatic!)
two days before the day, i re-ordered a new duvet cover, striped and made of microfiber. the softest sheets i’d ever slept on were at the cutest bed and breakfast in vermont and they were made of microfiber. now a year later, i finally ordered a version for myself for $29 to replace my existing dull dark gray jersey duvet cover. the original order was supposed to arrive on valentines day, but ended up lost in the mail, so i supposed that this would make a birthday present to myself.
the night before, after a nice enough first date, i got home early, treating myself to 4 mcnuggets + small fries, and then cleaned my bathtub and toilet, did my dishes and the laundry, took out the recycling, and tidied up clutter lying around the apartment, some comfort youtube playing in the background. i felt a calling to maybe do my taxes. (i didnt do them.) i received some birthday messages from friends in asia, i lay in bed and fell asleep.
in the morning, i woke up to more happy birthday messages. i also saw news, my sister sent me, that khalil fong, a musician from hong kong, had passed away. i listened to some of his songs. i RSVPed to an old friend’s wedding next year; as it was the deadline to do so. i booked a dance class at the gym, put on a set of clean clothes, then headed out to the cafe a little past 8am to get some writing done.
as i journaled, i reflected on what a utilitarian approach i tend to take to my birthday, now that i live alone and in NYC. the past few years, i’d spent the day going to work, attending my first dentist appointment of the year, carving out time to make progress on personal projects. the approach feels similar to my first instincts when putting together christmas wishlists for various secret santas — ideally, i would be gifted rolls of toilet paper, tide pods, conditioner, eggs, black ballpoint pens. all necessities i have an immediate need for and have neglected purchasing for myself.
it’s curious to take inventory of what i have decided to do with my birthday time, where its socially accepted time for people to take a break from that stuff and get extravagant. instead, ive gone to the dentist, to the gym. i considered going to a nice restaurant for dinner, but thought, i probably should just treat my body to a balanced meal with vegetables instead. stuff that i know is good for me but i’m generally reluctant to fit in my daily routine, i will do instead on my birthday, the day when i theoretically should feel most exempt from it. why is that?
it’s interesting. on the day to day, i am a pretty self-indulgent person. i wouldn’t call myself frugal or particularly restrictive. i like to do what i want, when i want to do it. i make big unnecessary purchases on a whim. i don’t need people to buy me nice stuff, if there was some luxury that i really wanted, i probably already bought it for myself. i prioritize the nice to haves, things that are fun and enjoyable, somewhat hedonistically i suppose. what i really struggle to invest money and energy into are the mundane maintenance tasks, averse to spending time on them because i find them boring and neverending. why must i do my laundry now, just to do it again 3 days later, when i could just put it off for the full week and therefore spend less of my lifetime on laundry? i’d rather spend hundreds of dollars on a baseball game, concert ticket, than $10 on a supply of dental floss.
this is my theory: birthday time feels like a luxury, permission to slow down to take care of myself in a way that is necessary, basic forms of self care.
or, here is another theory: it’s a sobering attempt at imposing some sort of discipline, structure, responsibility, on myself because i am now an adult. i’m not getting any younger, obviously, none of us are, so i should take this stuff more seriously. if i’m not going to do it, who will?
while i haven’t been able to get it together enough to organize a “celebration” for myself, i’ve felt very lucky to have the people around me. at home in hong kong, my mom would buy my favorite chocolate froufrou cake, my sister would make me a handmade gift. in my birthdays as an adult, away from home, a lovely friend would take pity and plan something, oftentimes organizing a small dinner with our friends. i remember how stunned i was the first time this happened in london, when a friend came over with our three other friends and made brunch, of comfort foods (pancakes, fries) and my favorite cocktail at the time (amaretto sour). (i miss you alysha! justin!). when i first moved to NYC for grad school, two friends showed up outside my dorm room with a cake (barry and marisha <3). the past couple years in NYC, my friends have hosted me at their place for food and cake (thank you harry, sumeet, katin!!). these acts of service, receiving happy birthday texts, the fact that people remember and make the effort to send me good wishes, stuns me still. i am amazed that people proactively keep track, my birthday a recurring event in their digital calendars. my friend nicola showed me the one for next year, that states i’ll be turning 30.
sometimes i feel bad, like maybe it would stress those friends out less if i just did something for my birthday, so the burden wouldn’t be on them to feel like they needed to do something. sometimes i feel a bit guilty about it, that my friends might feel obligated to do something because i have not planned anything myself, and embarrassed that they then have to do the work.
this year, my friend katin and i made pho from scratch, following her mom’s recipe. she bought all the ingredients earlier in the day, cleaned the chicken, and then we prepped the garnishes, shredded the chicken together in her apartment. we caught up, watched national geographic’s series on smuggling on youtube on TV, and then our other friend harry joined. we scratched some scratch offs, a mini oreo cheesecake was brought out, we chatted until past midnight. it was perfect.
self portraits ✦
recently wrote about self portraiture, and it has stayed with me. i have been following her work since high school, from flickr to instagram and now substack, and continue to be inspired by her. it was really wonderful to see a collection of her recent self portraits, and to read her reflections on the practice. so i decided what the hell, i’ll do some proper self portraits as part of my birthday celebration this year. in the era and side of flickr that i grew up in, it was all teenagers shooting self portraits (did a quick google search for any think pieces about this phenomenon in the early 2010s but couldnt find any, so you’ll just have to trust me), so i was shooting a lot self portraits too, on a tripod and self timer. here is a self portrait i took on the eve of my 16th birthday, in my old bedroom, edited only for color and brightness, the ghostly nature shutter speed induced:
i havent taken many formal self portraits since high school, though my phone is littered with mirror selfies and front camera selfies. i did, however, make use of vintage photobooths to document turning 27:
skipped 28,
and for 29, i took a photobooth strip (before dinner) and a formal portrait in my bedroom (after dinner), with a nod to my old, ghostly style (also shutterspeed induced, not through editing):
what i’m reading
if you were rich, would you fold laundry? by
on how impossible it seems, in a modern life, to dedicate the time needed to maintain that life — thought about this essay when reflecting on how i choose to spend my birthdays
we chronically underestimate the time needed to maintain a life, we believe ardently that such tasks should be squeezed invisibly between actual work. This little delusion is, I think, required by the demands of modern professional schedules. What would a week look like where all the tasks of living were given the time they require, with a little extra buffer? What if I calculated all commuting time as if I might hit the red lights, and I accurately assumed grocery shopping would take an additional twenty minutes due to a toddler in tow, and I expected that there would be medical and dental appointments, and I set aside time for handling household items that will inevitably break and need fixing, and I acknowledged that packing for a trip takes a certain amount of time, as does unpacking?
Two dedicated hours each day for completing the tasks of living. It sounds both completely reasonable and utterly impossible.
Can you bet it all on your novel? by
such an interesting question and answer, i so related to the reader’s ask and felt comforted by the advice
Subject: On being 29 and in Search of Something
I live at home with my parents, near Los Angeles, and I work for a company I have moral qualms about that pays me not enough. I enjoy the company of my friends, but I don't crave it, I think, because they don't read and don't have the same interests as I do. I can change all this, of course, but I tell myself that what's stopping me from these changes is the book that I'm writing. I want to devote as much time and energy as I can into it, though I have been writing for 11 years now without anything to really show for it. I don't know if writing gives my life meaning, but when I do it, I enjoy it and it feels almost painful not to write.
As you said— you know you could change these things that feel so intolerable, but you’re not doing it. You’re betting everything on the book. But I’d invite you to not see the book itself as the thing you’re putting your chips on, but rather the privacy and internal process of writing itself.
youth by
so funny and true, on the expectations of youth and age, from the POV of 45
To do a thing young is a shortcut to greatness. Everything you do right is evidence of your great potential, and all your mistakes are the mistakes of inexperience, which will be corrected, surely, by the passing of time. To write a poor sentence at the age of nineteen is expected (and quickly forgiven). To write a poor sentence at the age of forty-five—shouldn’t you know better by now? In this manner, being a not-young writer is a lose-lose proposition, because this principle applies to brilliant sentences, too. In youth, they are a marvel; later, they’re table stakes.
The years that pass eat up your margin for error until there is no margin left. The mistakes you make are no longer flaws of inexperience, they are flaws of character. To be young is to be constantly on the precipice of perfection – just a little further and you’ll get there
it remained his goal: to be a young writer, and to be discovered. The problem is: no one wants to discover a 45-year-old. 45-year-olds aren’t discovered, they’re uncovered, like toxic waste, or a political scandal, or the murderer at the end of an Agatha Christie book. My god, that 45-year-old was lurking among us this entire time!
The world was good, but the world was no longer full of all these possibilities. What, then, fills the void where possibility once lived?
a response to the essay above from the POV of a woman in her twenties, which is pretty cool
Contemporary beauty standards for women demand that we freeze all visible signs of ageing in our early twenties, if not even earlier. Perhaps the allure to being a “young writer” operates under a similar premise — that by our mid-twenties we are fully formed, and any further development is unnecessary at best, undesirable at worst. That our peak happiness and creativity always coincides with our peak hotness, and once we have lost that, it’s all downhill, on all fronts
your notebook will never help me by
my substack posts feel like expanded diary entries which feel like dictations of the thoughts in my brain, so i felt this passage in my bones
I cannot picture objects or environments in my brain — when writing my own fiction, I have to make a conscious effort to remember to describe the physical world in which it is set. Instead, I live with a continuous, near-audible internal monologue. Thinking, to me, does not feel vastly different from writing a diary entry or first draft — sometimes the only concrete difference between the two is the availability of a laptop, or pen and paper, or the required effort.
what i’ve been listening to
shadow of a man - lady gaga
dance no more - sunday scaries, kaleena zanders
it boy - bbno$
關於愛的定義 - khalil fong
trip - ella mai
heartache medication - jon pardi
parting question
tell me, when is your birthday and what do you like to do for it?
i did feel less panic this year than i did last year though. on turning 28, i was newly attuning to the idea of fully being in my “late twenties.” turning 29 this year feels kind of right. next year will probably lead to more of a mental existential crisis, fully leaving behind being twenty something, but that’s an issue for another time.
Every year I become obsessed with the idea of a "perfect" birthday--so much so that I become paralyzed with indecision and end up doing hardly anything at all to celebrate. I told my best friend this last year, and he was appalled. He said, "fuck that, I'M planning you a surprise birthday." I invited all the people in my life I wanted to celebrate with to a private chat, removed myself so they could plan the surprise day, and was simply told to be ready at 11 a.m. on my birthday (October 27th) to be picked up. It was the best birthday I've ever had--full of friends and loved ones, going to a drag brunch, a pop-up book shop at a local brewery, and rounded off with a showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show at a local gay bar. It was humbling and lovely to know my friends knew me so well to plan the most perfect birthday and even more lovely to have them take the time out of their busy lives to spend it with me.
so relatable. every year on my birthday i think i'm gonna do something and then it's too overwhelming and i don't do anything. this has been going on for the last 20 years... my last real birthday celebration was when i was 10. thanks for the shout out, love seeing your recent self portraits!