— by A. Majied 😉 😘 😜
Here are the themes I’ve gleaned from a most auspicious event, my own birthday. And why You, too, ought to take a moment to reflect on the Circumstances, Conditions, and your Thoughts on your present stage of life (aka Current Level(s) for the RPG diehards reading this today).
Once again, as I pen these digital words about my life, I split in this digital parasocial world. I worry my words will be found too subtle to nudge You, dear reader, in the practical sort of way I often lack.
So let me share with you directly the thing I wished for because I have been careful to make that wish each year I can think to remember. Yet, the thing I want for this year feels like a terrifying and odiously selfish desire:
To gain the capacity to Understand and possess the Will to persevere (even slightly daunted) to see my goals through to success. But, it was granted to me in installments over the decades a much younger me also wished for: at the precipice of a massive hurricane, WIDE as Florida is LONG, bearing down on the sleepy township where my parents built a home to raise my siblings & me. 🥲
I bring this up because it occurred before the turn of the century, so many of my very close friends at the time worried most about having enough AA batteries for their Gameboy (classic). My parents taught my siblings and me which windows needed plywood cut to fit and affix to our home.
Not a brag, it was also a storm that taught me that I was still too young to process the apoplectic rage a prepubescent child can feel in their bones over Not knowing how to protect my secret Fruit and vegetable garden growing in the backyard, lest I reveal who was the mischievous little garden gnome taking & leaving gloves, tools and supplies outside (for my after Fajr inspection of the soon-to-be “prized” watermelon still coming in on the vine… yes I knew I planted them late in the season, but it was a hectic Summer and had to attempt to smuggle seeds from many a cookout before getting a sufficient stock of what younger me needed 😅).
But I share these words with the folk who can read them. Mainly because, barring 3 people living in countries I still need passport stamps for, one of my quirks since the 2010s was needing to physically meet and talk to a person in IRL before clicking Confirm or even more terrifying notion of initiating a friendship with the innocuous “Add Friend” button.
Because “para-social relationships are a helluva journey”!
Some part of me would say, in this endless soliloquy, I’d touch on that more later, but I am coming to the end of this latest shout into the wind.
(Bars? 🤔 🔥 🎤)
To close,
As a small child, yes, I once recklessly wished for both the capacity & ability to take in and process the nigh-endless reams of information I seemed to pick up from my painfully talented siblings and The New Kid who moved to my neighborhood. Who, despite his stature, at the time so very slight, granted me a chance to explore perspectives to one day be able to make an obscure Pokémon reference: I was the “Wish Support Vaporeon” my Team needed all along because I too was just another Scarf-Dog (🐶🧣)who knew I’d need to eventually choose a Catalyst to aid me in gaining enough strength (inner & outer) lest some powerful other chooses for me, many still tried. 🙄
I still do not know how effective I’ve become at being the best Player I can be in all the various Teams I’m a member of 😉 at level 36, I’ve picked up a panoply of strategies to slot into a bevy of Roles, as needed.
But, before another birthday, the day prior, landfall was made of yet another Category 4 Hurricane.
And because of my Ability and not my Anxiety, I heeded so many messages and affirmed to my friends, family, and foes — Gulf hurricanes are notoriously worrisome (every year, there is more & more concrete replacing deep native marsh grasses & trees. And, now, only pretty paltry invasive reeds glom onto what soil they can. With zero comfort knowing, they are often buried in a pre-death shroud of plastic wrap & canvas, worst still sometimes left in their nursery planters. The epitome of Form obliterating every other intended Function, save for NIMBYism aesthetics 🪴 😑).
Dear friend, those early paragraphs were merely my Southern sign-off because the real “to close” is with these words to every person: I hope you share this essay, steal it, and Copy & Paste with the 2 imperceptible functions that built the modern internet.
So, use them to build on the vibe of my words, “What have you wished for?”
Once upon a time, I wished on a water-stone for the talent to withstand and recover from so many physical challenges over the decades. I leave you with this — for a brief time, I hope I evoked a fascinating medley of emotions for you too: to taste, to digest, and ultimately to process it all over the next span of days and come to some new insight of your ability to do so.
The taste of having to plan a birthday during a hurricane is bitter, salty, and even umami. Because the East Coast is penultimately perpetually blasé about their lights and AC working through the entire week. Some of the most talented folk I know on the West Coast of the sunshine state proved their engineering prowess, southern ingenuity, and dogged tenacity to remind me of all the equipment and Hard Effort it takes for the small hands of my Once-Self to safeguard a hidden backyard garden. And, only occasionally pause from all the running around the property was to notice your older brother joining you in screaming into the wind.
P.S.
Tip to those with iOS and a curiousity to translate the arcane words tend to weave, so you can glean more of my intent.
Please borrow this process, know that you can use a series of press and hold functions to “Look up” and selected words will have provided a Wiki entry hover for your reading pleasure; for longer text and those with a preference for taking into audio information, there is also a “Speak” function so your tired eyes can pull a Grade School and listen while you scan-along to the text; lastly always know there is a setting feature that will allow you to change the Text to Voice playback speed & even the gendered accent available to you.
Savage Science Labs 