With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come

quoting Shakespeare for melodramatic effect can only mean one thing: it was my birthday recently

I so appreciate all the kind comments and likes from my last post. I worked hard on that, for more hours than I’ve done for a piece of writing in recent years, and I am truly so very pleased and honored it resonated with so many of you. What to do next? It seems clear: retire.

Just kidding. I’m not pulling a Hannah Gadsby or a Brett Favre (faking my retirement for attention). But I am at a bit of a loss about what to write next. I’m no longer a writer for my work (though most of the work writing I did wasn’t truly creative writing and certainly not personal essay), so I don’t have deadlines or expectations or, and I can’t emphasize this enough, a paycheck to motivate me to get my rear in gear.

I have a few ideas for something similar going forward—more ruminative, somewhat biographical, semi-journalistic stuff. Writing that kind of piece feels meaningful and really makes me stretch my artistic legs.

But I also identify as a humorist, and as we all know: if you say it, it’s true.

So in between heavier, more artsy pieces, you can still count on my signature hijinks, puckishness and tomfoolery! I know myself well enough to be aware that I will continue to make my little jokes and drop my little quips and shake my tin cup under y’all’s noses begging for a farthing of attention for as long as I have breath in my lungs and dexterity in my typing fingers.

Meanwhile, I recently turned 39. My previous post was titled “When we were very young” in part because I couldn’t think of a good title (headlines are hard for me) and it’s a line from one of the A.A. Milne books of poetry I mentioned in the piece, but also probably because my birthday was approaching as I was writing it.

Don’t you dare think that my increasing age is what’s thrown me into a tailspin; I look AMAZING.

#nofilter #justskincare

I do always get a little “out, out brief candle” around my birthdays, not gonna lie. I was rooting around in my archives at Think Big, Live Small and Fierce Beagle and found a couple fun birthday-related posts from years past. I hope you enjoy.

When I turned 35.

A little glimpse of what 14-year-old Ethan was like when he was two.