Thursday, October 18, 2007

Here We Are Folks, The Dream We All Dream Of

And here we are, the glorious 31st anniversary of the date of my birth! I am so like a little kid about birthdays. I *LOVE* my birthday. It is the best day of the year for me. I feel like the whole day just kind of glows. My kids' birthdays are great, don't get me wrong, but my birthday is special. It's all mine, all to myself. And today is going really, really well. It's been a nice calm day at work, busy but not horribly busy. I have three cards from work friends, a cake and was taken out to lunch at one of my very favorite restaurants. One of my closest friends took me out to dinner and dessert last night and I'm going out tonight with my precious family and my dad.

Every year on my birthday, I kind of take stock of my life and see where I am. This year, things are really great. I'm happily married, I now have *two* beautiful children to adore, I still really love my job (most days), I have good friends at work and in my personal life, and now I have a budding professional photography career.

On this, my happiest day of the year, I'd like to share some life theories that I like.

The first is my own. I feel like your late twenties are when you figure out who you are and who you want to be as a person and your early thirties are when you figure out what you want to do. For me, this involved clearing out some really negative people from my life and learning to love and like myself. It involved learning to stand up for myself and not feel guilty for not being able to all things to all people. And my thirties have been about pursuing photography - buying better equipment and learning more about the craft. Getting out and taking more shots. Photographing people I love and trying to craft the best shots I can.

The second theory is from Molly. It is the two-thirds theory and I think it's brilliant.
"1) The two-thirds theory. Meaning, you have a professional life, a social life and a romantic life. As long as two of the three were good, you could be happy. If you slipped to just one, it was time to get your shit together. If you got all three, then heck, you Won. But two-thirds was nothing to complain about."

Best wishes to you all. I hope you all have all three thirds at the happiest level possible.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Happy Birthday!!!

Tess said...

Happy Birthday! Sounds like you're having a great day. As it should be.

That 2/3 thing makes me think of Sex and The City, when they said single women are always looking for either a job, a partner, or an apartment.

Shelly said...

Thank you both!

Yes, Tessie, it reminds me of that, too. And I think that's equally true.

Laura said...

Happy Birthday. I hope you have a wonderful day, full of the glow.

Shelly said...

Thanks mrsgrumpy, I hope you have a good day, too.

Black Sheeped said...

Happy birthday!

TSintheC said...

Happy Birthday!

Lys said...

Happy Belated Birthday!!! I hope you had a fabulous day and best wishes for the year to come :)

Shelly said...

Welcome, black sheeped! And thanks!

Shelly said...

Thank you, Hot!

And thanks a lot, lys! I did have a really great day, except that I found out that one of my best friends lost her job. So that was a real downer. And I let Supergirl eat too much cake, so Friday started at 4:00am with her barfing all over the place. But that's Friday - that doesn't count against my birthday.