to me

I started out my 23rd birthday the night before, just out with one of my roommates trying to have a fun time. We went out to the Mission to meet her friend's own birthday party, and for some reason we got talked into going clear across town with them to the Alpha bar, which I always say has such untapped potential - mostly because it's a great spot but there's never anyone there. The topper to get us to go was that they were allegedly filming a Budweiser commercial there - the two of us looked at each other intrigued by sheer curiosity. It ended up being starkly abandoned as usual, though (despite the halfway decent DJs always spinning live), and luckily I had called up my friend Igor, who resides in the neighborhood, to keep me company among all of the friends of friends I had zero relation to.
Worked way too many hours again today, frantically (to the tune of the buzzing of dear friends wishing me happy birthday on my mobile phone, in the background of coworkers bringing me cakes and flowers as I worked through lunch), we all keep saying the psychotic work schedule is temporary until the new people are trained and I can stop being held responsible for two people's jobs.
Got home at 7:30 and realized if I wanted to put anything remotely social together I would have to think of something. I made some calls and cooked myself dinner in an empty apartment.
Birthdays aren't a big deal, but they still make you feel like you're going to want to make remembering them not lonely.
I wanted to do something low-key, and it worked out perfectly - 2 out of 3 roommates (the 3rd was under the weather) plus Igor and a friend. We danced so hard to 60s soul in the back room at Delirium I felt like I was living something I'd been half putting off for a really long time.
It's hard to gleam insight from contentment, because you can't conclude much except that you've done a few things right and you should try not to allow them to change, but things have been getting good for a while now, better even, good enough to get down to projects, good enough to want to give back.