Birthday Vanilla French Toast and the Preface of the Manifesto

This.  This is what a birthday breakfast should look like...

Vanilla and cinnamon French toast with REAL butter, powdered sugar, and warm maple syrup.  Yes, please.  It was delicious.  Thanks for asking.

Indeed, it is my birthday.  ((No, I'm not admitting how old I am.))  It has been a great day thus far with a gzillion well-wishes from family and friends.  ((The most genuine and poetic probably being, "I love you a shit-load.))  The plans include lunch with Deb where calories don't count and drinks tonight with 25 or so of my favoritest people.

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately ((no, I am not having a mid-life crisis, I'm too young for that...))  On a daily basis almost, I hear people saying how much they despise this, that, or the other thing.  How much they resent the list of crap they have to do.  You can just see how beaten down they are.  The thing that keeps going in my head is that all that bullshit that fills up your to-do list and your calendar-- those appointments to keep, people to meet, promises to follow-through on?  Those things are your life.  Not just the fun stuff.  It is the day-to-day minutiae that makes up 98% ((or quite possibly more)) of your life and you had better make damn sure that those things are the things and the people that you care about, that make you happy ((or at the very least not fracking miserable,)) and that make you someone worth knowing.

Consequently, as has been hinted at somewhat in these virtual pages, I am taking that challenge head on this year.  I've thought long and hard about what it is that I actually do that makes me feel more like me.  What it is that I look forward to the most.  What I would do if I had the time.  What I would do if I weren't too chicken-shit to try.  What I would and could do and possibly fail at like a goddamn champion.  Enough thinking.  I'm doing it.  And it starts right now. 

I'm not saying it is going to be easy.  But I know it will be worth it.