Turning Twenty is Weird.

From a pragmatic — perhaps arbitrary — point of view, birthdays are really weird. To celebrate the day you began to exist on your own, with balloons and cake. We enumerate ourselves, systematizing our time spent surviving by the rotation of the Earth around our sun.

Of course, trying to view such a tradition from such an abstract mindset is really just a faint coping mechanism. An attempt at distancing myself emotionally from the sentimentality of coming to terms with actually, kinda-sorta, becoming an adult.

But no amount of logically arguing the physical realness of birthdays — with myself — can change the fact that they exist. And instead, my time is better off being used thinking about life so far.

My peers — and a multitude of others — attempt to create an incredible life, from a list of incredible things. The Bucket List, as it’s usually called, is well-established as various fantastical objectives that you’d want to accomplish before you die. It’s an understandable and fun idea, upon its premise, but there’s something fundamentally wrong with the idea.

While there isn’t exactly anything right or wrong to want to do within your lifetime, there are commonalities between many of them. Some try to find a sort of quantitative measure of success, like making a certain amount of money, or maybe something more career-oriented.

The detritus of the forest had already begun to cool down in Nelson. Autumn had bled throughout the coast, leaving a film of frost on the leaves of fallen trees. Branches the shade of crude oil littered the trails; more clutter was left flailing aimlessly in the wind. The sky stung with darkness, still not having fully cleared.

This past summer had brought an excess of forest fires that not only slaughtered the trees, prey as well. It left many animals desperate in search of nutrition.

Finding the Middle Way and unlearning anxiety.

It’s a balmy Saturday afternoon, the hottest it’s been in Calgary so far this year.

My 20th birthday is only eleven days away. I don’t know if this is a milestone or not — but I do know that I want something to show for it. I find myself constantly recalibrating, trying to create an amount of meaningful work.

Hopefully, I’m pushing myself the right direction.