My birthday pledge

9th September 2005

I dunno. Every birthday, I seem to get a year older. Today I turn 32. It’s roughly the age I always wanted to be, if that makes sense. I guess that stems from not really being taken seriously when I was a teenager, or in my early twenties.

I’d have great ideas or visions, but older folks in more powerful positions would pat me on the head and say “Oh, well done!” before either ignoring me or taking those ideas for themselves. I think that now I’ve hit my thirties, I’m a lot more comfortable with who I am, what I want, and what I say - and I really enjoy that.

So, it is with a rye smile and great happiness that I welcome this birthday. Lots of great things have happened for me since I hit 30, and in the last twelve months have been particularly good. If I keep working hard and be a good little soldier, hopefully this will continue.

A potted history by year

0. Born. Don’t cry much, just glad to be out. I have work to do on your planet.
1. First sip of beer whilst in my pram (have photo to prove it)
2. Speak my first word (car) and I’m moving about a lot.
3. Push my Grandad into a swimming pool.
4. Go to first football match.
5. First girlfriend - Gaynor.
6. Play Joseph in the nativity play at school.
7. Witness the skies genuinely raining frogs. Utterly bizarre.
8. Discover I have bad hayfever.
9. I have a very impressive Star Wars collection
10. I don’t really interact with other kids much.
11. Have two Zebra Finches as pets.
12. Witness my friends going off with girls. Nobody fancies me.
13. I’m a fattish kid that nobody really likes.
14. Discover New Order. Life changes. Get into graffiti.
15. Lose weight, get good haircut. Turns out I was OK under the blubber.
16. Leave school with a few A grades, go to college.
17. First car. A beat-up Nissan Cherry. Beige.
18. First proper girlfriend. She’s hot. Lose virginity!
19. Voted “Most huggable” boy at Sixth-Form. Leave to do Art Course.
20. Move to Sunderland (Art school). Start smoking. Get dumped.
21. Drugs (don’t do it, kids).
22. More drugs. New girl. First group art show. Get dumped.
23. Leave Art school with mediocre grade (they didn’t understand my work!)
24. Move to London. Meet lots of famous people. New girl.
25. Leave London - move to Iceland for the Summer. Get dumped.
26. Single again. Working in crap shop, but learning HTML. Winter in Iceland.
27. Get my first Mac. Set up an arts organisation.
28. Walk across Iceland with my best friend. Join Agenzia!
29. Organise an arts festival. Working way too hard and have mini burn-out.
30. Start blogging. Meet Emma.
31. Stop working with artists. Emma moves in.
32. Present day…

And now to more urgent matters. I hereby pledge that I will continue to eat better food, do much more exercise and cycle everywhere, lose my growing beer belly, be more tolerant of those closest to me, work even harder at the office, finally finish the book chapters, stop wearing hats indoors, get less anxious about trivial things, be less generous when I need to be, not talk myself into doing cool projects for zero cash and many more little things that I shall not bore you with right now.

I may of course feel awful about turning 32. I’m writing this on the 8th, and it will publish itself whilst I’m traveling back from London in the wee hours of my birthday. I’m probably just wring this to remind certain people to buy me gifts.

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