It's a Birthday Thing

 It's my birthday again! Head's up for the overly philosophical, pretentious, and extremely ramble-y un-edited post that I almost always make on my birthday.

This is one of my senior photos taken by my talented friend Jewels, who is getting quite good at using my camera. :) I also look really weird without glasses. 

For some reason, every year on my birthday, I start to get a little freaked out about the fact that, yes, I am, in fact, growing older.

I think that this is the sort of thing that bugs everyone who over-thinks and over-analyses life in general. In the midst of the partying and hanging out with friends, you pause for a moment and realize that time is passing.

It's a strange thing, if you think about it. Every moment is a moment that comes and goes, so why do birthdays make me think so much about time and growing up?

Insert random photo of flowers... because overthinking things makes me think of flowers

I'm one of those weird people who never, ever wanted to grow up. Sure, I loved the freedom I earned from the responsibilities I undertook over the years, but deep down I was Peter Pan. "Don't wanna grow up!"

Part of it was a bit of a prideful thing. As a child (and it is so strange to think that I am no longer a child, nor have I legally been for an entire year!), I was blessed with talent, dedication, and an encouraging family. I loved doing arts and crafts and science and writing and reading. Like everyone else, I appreciated and loved being complimented on the things I worked so hard on.

I always dreaded growing older. Not because I was a morbid kid with a gothic fear or fascination with death or even old age, but because I had this idea that anything I did at a young age was worth more than if I did the same thing when I was older.

So many people would say things like: "WOW! I can't believe you came up with something as creative and detailed as that and you are only 9 years old!"

"No way you drew that! What do you mean, you don't take take art classes? Holy cow, you are only 15?"

Sadly, I always did and still usually do make a point of telling people "oh yeah, I did this way back when I was 15."

While I know they meant well, and while I loved these sorts of compliments, I trapped myself into a weird mindset. I became convinced that my work became less impressive and less meaningful the older I got. To be brutally honest, I'd daydream of being a child prodigy. (This was especially bad one year after reading a book about Akiane, a painting prodigy who is only a year older than me and lived in my old town before I lived there. I wondered what I was doing with my life and why I couldn't be awesome like her.)

Today I am 19. This is the first birthday that I am spending away from my family. My new college friends have made my entire birthday weekend an absolute BLAST (and if I weren't in a really thoughtful mood at the moment, this entire post would be nothing but paragraphs worth of exclamation marks because my new friends are really amazing and sweet!!!).

I'm an adult now. I'm old enough that I could get married. I could get a regular job and live on my own. I buy my own groceries now. I'm in college, living in a dorm, and life is so surreal and exciting. I'm taking actual art classes and receiving training from people who are so talented that I am blown away and overwhelmed by their gifts.

And today, for the first time, it struck me how completely stupid my fear of growing up was. Growing up does not invalidate talent. Growing up does not make me less important. Growing up has, instead, made me realize that the world does not revolve around me, and that my goal right now is not to do amazing things and revel in compliments, but to attempt to be humble and learn. Other people are just as important, and in many ways are far, far more important. If I've been blessed with different gifts than many other people, I've been given these gifts to help others and to glorify God-- not to glorify me. I don't know everything and I am not good at everything, and being in college in the midst of new people, places, and ideas is making that really sink in.

Besides, even though I am growing older every second of every day, I never actually have to grow up. Growing up is overrated. One of my best friends came over a month before I moved in to college to take my senior photos. We started taking some cool normal ones:

But then we forgot that we were 18 years old and played dress up for hours and hours outside of an old cemetery.

I'm growing up to be a complete nerd, and I'm totally okay with it. As John Green says:

Graphics credit to ?. Via Pinterest.

As I was writing this, Jason Mraz came up on my playlist. I think the lyrics to this song are fitting, because they certainly fit my mood:

The world as I see it, is a remarkable place
A beautiful house in a forest, of stars in outer space.

And to make this be a triad of quotes:

  "We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders." --G.K. Chesterton

So this year I am going to work more on appreciating life and being grateful. I'm sounding really cheesy and cliche, but right now I don't care.

Spock out.

untitled

I turned 18 recently.

My birthday was lovely... I had several friends over to spend the night, and I celebrated becoming an adult by having a book-themed tea party. Everyone came in a costume and we ate so many desserts (everything from lembas bread, to Balin's (root)beer, to Turkish Delight, to the poison in Snow White's apple-- aka red Jello-- to Willy Wonka candy bars, complete with a ticket for the birthday girl, to cheesecake cupcakes which isn't from any book but tasted heavenly, to butterbeer and tea and biscuits from high tea from Jane Austen... and more... yes, it was YUM).

The lembas bread turned out wonderfully. The Turkish Delight... not so much.

I was a terrible host and made my friends help me cook. We even had a themed breakfast-- green eggs and ham (Green Eggs and Ham), blue pancakes (Percy Jackson), strawberries and cream (all British books), white grape juice (my favorite, which we were calling nectar and ambrosia, so it ties into Greek mythology, right?), and a pineapple with a bow (PSYCH! and it's a TARDIS blue bow!).

I pulled my first true all nighter, mostly watching movies like The Young Victoria and Inception but also just hanging out. We were so tired but still went out to go on a hike (and I went crazy with the camera. The picture above is one of my friends on the hike. The drought is over and flowers finally abound.)

Then I hung out at home doing nothing and having a blast. Weekend birthdays are the best.

On one hand, I feel (...somewhat) mature and 18 isn't such a big deal. On the other hand... HOLY COW I'M AN ADULT NOW?!

How it is possible to feel both far too old and far to young at the same time? Life is a perpetually perplexing paradox. (And apparently I appreciate alliteration!).

Whose idea was it to say that you are a grownup when you are 18? I don't feel like an adult. Sure, I can take care of myself and I'm fairly responsible, mature, yada yada bingle bongle dingle dangle yickedy do, yickedy da, ping pong, lippy tappy too taa. (Did you catch the reference? Anyone?)

But at the same time, I feel so young, untested, inadequate, and unprepared. I suppose everyone, even the most grownup of grownups, must feel that way sometimes. I think it's more of a human thing than purely an age thing.

Just a moment after that thought crosses my mind, it strikes me that I have been alive for more than 567,710,208 seconds. Then I get that same eerie feeling that I always have when I hear stories about prodigies, see an impressive piece of art, read an amazing book, meet someone who is completely driven with love, learn about a saint, or merely think about the freakishly amazing things than people think of-- namely, what in the world have I been doing with my life?! 

I'm a few hundred million seconds old. How many of those seconds have I wasted? How many opportunities to love, to pray, to learn, to create, have I passed over? How many times have I ignored God and veered my life off track and squandered these precious seconds?  

Being an adult is a wonderful thing. My family has helped me wonderfully and my parents have prepared me for this time. I feel so young and unready but I do know I can totally manage it. But although in the next few years I will be leaving home and beginning new journeys, I don't ever want to grow up.

There is a difference between being an adult due to age and maturity and being a grownup because you've forgotten how to be a kid. I can't imagine how dull it is to be one of those thousands of people who have lost their sense of wonder and joy. Little kids have a true gift because every little thing excites them. Everything from the rich crisp color of an apple to the hum of the washing machine to the taste of cerulean wind to the way that fingers move is a miracle to them.

This post is brought to you by a slighty very goofy young adult Shaylynn, who is not in an unusually philosophical mood. (I actually think about stuff like this all the time, I just feel silly trying to put it into words, and just feel silly in general). This Shaylynn also decided to take self-portraits because 1) being the photographer of the family, she had no good pictures of herself and 2) she wanted to mess with camera settings and see if the self-timer would let the camera focus properly. As the picture to the right proves, the self-timer sometimes went off before expected... She also took these pictures after a birthday all-nighter and forgot to put on makeup and is vaugely wondering why she is allowing herself to post these pictures on her blog. She's also writing this right at bedtime which should account for all the rambling. She's also writing in third person. She's also commenting on the obvious. She's also commenting on the obvious. She's also commenting on the obvious. (Cue infinite loop).

Thank You

for all the birthday wishes

17 kind of creeped up on me

for all the encouraging comments

they mean a lot

for being patient with me

as i work on school, i&f, and more



for being awesome!

i'm lazy/busy so this counts as the weekly destroyed book