An intro: One of my best birthdays.

Thanks, therapy!

​​It feels funny to say that one of the best birthdays I have ever had was literally the day the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global pandemic but…here we are.

My birthday and I have a complicated relationship. I’m sure I’m not alone in this. And no, a personal fear of aging is not the core of these complicated feelings. I reside squarely in the “gimme laugh lines, show me I’ve lived” camp. Instead, I wrestle with a different sort of existential beast.

Starting around the time responsibility for my own celebrations was naturally foisted upon me, my feelings about the day always seem to hover somewhere between sky-high expectations, attempts at being disconnected and casual about it, and predictions of let downs. These feelings are both personally inflicted and hard won, I think. When I was 20, my beloved maternal grandmother died five days after my birthday. The last thing she did before she died was send me a birthday card, a card that resides on a shelf above my desk.

Oh, yes, my birthday is today. March 11th. (I’ll let you know how it goes later.) It’s on the edge of spring, a transitional period between seasons, the moment before the world usually starts to brighten a little. It’s a time when I always struggle. I don’t want to. I try really hard not to. But with my grandmother’s spirit in the air, a predilection for sentimentality, and real instances where my birthday has been forgotten, ignored, or pushed aside, I find that I’m always in some sort of feverish negotiation with my sense of self.

So, when 2020 rolled around, I was ready to forgo the melancholic struggle and let myself revel in the joy that is March 11th. (Thanks, therapy!) And, honestly, it’s a birthday that tops the list. I was at work for the day, which automatically meant being around some people I enjoy. I was really feeling my outfit. There were a few gifts. Social media was sending me lots of love. I met up with my roommates for dinner and then took myself to see Company. I came home to cupcakes.

The next day, Broadway shut down. By Friday, my office moved to work from home. I canceled my birthday brunch on Saturday and had a movie day with a good friend instead. And today, it’s two full years later.

Now the pandemic and I share a birthday which…is a weird reminder of what my time looked like in the literal moments before this whole thing knocked me, knocked us spiraling into some great unknowns.

When there are unknowns, I want to record them. I want to collect them. I want to gingerly put them in a decorative box somewhere out of sight and forget about them for a while. I want to stumble upon the box on a rainy day, a half smile as I read the unknowns one-by-one.

But sometimes you have to face the unknowns because they come and they keep coming and there is no telling when the unknowns will meander or screech to a stop.

In an attempt to confront these unknowns, I committed to taking one selfie a day beginning on Monday, March 23, 2020. My thought was that this would be a good project to share with my sense of self, a way to prove I existed during an unpredictable time. I stopped taking these daily selfies two weeks after my second vaccine shot on Sunday, May 15, 2021. I missed a day here and there but on the whole, I can prove that I existed nearly every day during that time.

And now, I’m sharing these photos with you. Well, we’ll look at them together, a week at a time, since I haven’t revisited them much since May 2021. These selfie round-ups will come to your inbox every Sunday or Monday starting March 20th. Welcome to the pictorial ride of the first couple of years of these roaring (20)20s.

And hell, let’s start with a photo now, from March 11, 2020:

It’s not much but it’ll have to do.