It's my 46th birthday. I'm fine, I think.

By the time you read this, I’ll be forty-six-years-old. but as I type these words, I am forty-five. This isn’t magic. Or time travel. It’s a function of a content management system that lets me write Situation Normal early in the week and schedule it to publish every Sunday at 3:03 a.m. Pacific. ANYWAY, it’s my birthday. That’s the point, not magic, or time travel, or content management systems. But I’m not sure how I feel about this particular birthday. On the downside of the ledger, there’s getting old, closing in on The Big 5-0, and a brand of cologne called Melancholy™ that sometimes fills my nostrils and bums me out. But on the upside of the ledger, there’s cake. It’s a close call, feelings-wise.

The conventional wisdom is split on birthdays, especially the birthdays that fall in the middle years of life. One school of thought is to celebrate every birthday—to go big, or go home. Students of this school advocate wild birthday celebrations that make for great social media content. Possible options include:

• Trips to fun-loving destinations like Las Vegas, New Orleans, or Miami.

• Expensive gifts like cars, jewels, or fine art. Or, if you’re on a budget, NFTs that purport to be certificates of ownership for expensive gifts like cars, jewels, or fine art.

• Thrill-seeking adventures like going on a safari, sky diving, or entering an illegal martial arts tournament in Hong Kong to prove to yourself (and everyone else) that you’ve still got it by defeating the Belgian Nut-Puncher Jean-Claude Van Damme.

Another school of thought is to marinate in your melancholy birthday vibes. Students of this school advise against posting melancholy birthday content on social media, lest you be seen as a Debbie Downer or Bobby Buzzkill. Instead, students of the melancholy birthday school advise the following birthday options:

• Drink. Or, abuse drugs. Or, go for the intoxication combo platter by whipping up Piña coladas spiked with Ayahuasca.

• Ignore your birthday. If someone tries to wish you a happy birthday, tell them they’ve got the date wrong. If they insist that they have the correct date and that you’re just being “sad pants,” tell them to fuck off. If they refuse to fuck off, enter them in an illegal martial arts tournament in Hong Kong, where the Belgian Nut-Puncher Jean-Claude Van Damme will punch their genitals so hard they’ll shit Bloodsport sequels for a decade.

• Make a wish that everyone in your life will forgot your birthday. Then when you get your wish, pout about it all day, until the oily bohunk of your dreams sees you and celebrates your birthday with a grand romantic gesture.

Another school of thought is to use your birthday to impart some wisdom. This option becomes more appealing as you age, perhaps because you actually do become wiser, or perhaps because, with each passing year, you feel the need to make the decades of mistakes, wrong turns, and fuck ups, mean something. Options for imparting wisdom on your birthday include:

• Telling friends and family how to live their lives between bites of birthday cake.

• Flying to Hong Kong (for an illegal martial arts tournament) and bombarding your seat mate, who is just trying to watch Sixteen Candles, with nuggets of wisdom, until they punch you in the nuts.

• Writing essays, like this one.

Here’s the thing. Aside from Bloodsport and Sixteen Candles—two films I love, despite their problems—none of these birthday celebration options truly speaks to me this year. I don’t feel like going big. I don’t feel melancholy birthday vibes. And I don’t feel any wiser, even though I do feel a little older.

I feel…

Fine.

And by fine, I’m not referring to the acronym:

Fucked up

Insecure

Neurotic

Emotional.

I feel fine about turning forty-six. So fine, in fact, that I wondered if I should even write this essay. Because who cares if I feel fine? It’s interesting when people feel bad, and enviable when they feel good. But fine isn’t compelling.

And yet, here I am, telling you that I’m fine, but also, if I’m being honest, having my doubts about that claim.

Maybe it would be easier if I went to New Orleans. It’s easy to go big in The Big Easy, where everyone lives their best life, thanks to a steady diet of hurricanes and beignets. But I don’t drink, and I’m trying to watch my sugar intake, and honestly, I feel too old for that shit.

So maybe it would be easier if I just ignored my birthday. I could turn off my phone for the day. I could stay off Facebook too, but then log on the following day and do the obligatory “thanks for the birthday wishes” post, even though I might not feel especially thankful. Of course, Christina would still know it was my birthday, so there’s no getting around that. And let’s be honest, despite my sugar intake goals, I’d have a hard time resisting the free birthday ice cream at Baskin-Robbins. So maybe the melancholy option doesn’t work either.

But maybe I could impart some wisdom for my birthday. After all, there’s no rule that says it has to be my wisdom. I could plagiarize some wisdom. After I blow out the candles on my birthday cake, I could say, “The only true wisdom is knowing that you know nothing.” Of course, that’s what got Socrates killed on his birthday, so maybe he should’ve known better.

I think the thing that I’m struggling with is that this birthday doesn’t feel big, and it doesn’t feel melancholy, and it doesn’t feel wise. It feels fine. And I feel fine. But for some reason, feeling fine feels funny, but not haha-funny, unless you count that Jean-Claude Van Damme GIF.

Don’t get me wrong, though. Fine is better than fraught. Way better. Fraught is fixating on what you thought your life would be when you turned forty-six, then falling headlong into the gulf between that expectation and reality. Some people fill that gulf with thrills to dazzle their friends while masking their disappointment. Other people hide from that gulf by disappearing from their lives only to surface days later and pretend like everything was great. And other people paper over that gulf between expectations and reality by telling you they know the secret to life, even if it’s too late for them to use that secret to right their ship.

But I think those people are full of shit. Actually, I know they’re full of shit because I am full of shit. Over the course of forty-five birthdays, I’ve sought birthday thrills, and I’ve pulled off birthday vanishing acts, and when I turned forty-four, I gave myself the birthday gift of hubris by writing an essay about—get this—the secret to happiness.¹

I’m not doing any of that this year. I’m doing a small game night with friends, eating pizza, and maybe cake. If someone tells me to go big, I’ll tell them to go home. If I feel melancholy, I’ll call out that feeling for what it is, rather than trying to run away from myself. And if I feel wise, I’ll remind myself that Socrates was right. It’s my birthday. It happens every year. And I’ll be fine.

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Stick around and chat!

You know the drill. I’ve got questions. You’ve got answers.

1. How did you celebrate your last birthday? Be honest.

2. How will you celebrate your next birthday? Lie to me.

3. If birthdays didn’t exist, Facebook would’ve gone bankrupt years ago, right?

4. Bloodsport or Sixteen Candles? Hint: the correct answer is a Molly Ringwald and Jean-Claude Van Damme double feature.

5. Are you fine? Bare your soul!

Want more Michael Estrin stories? I’ve got two books!

Ride/Share: Micro Stories of Soul, Wit and Wisdom from the Backseat is a collection of my Lyft driver stories🚗🗣

Not Safe for Work is a slacker noir novel based on my experiences covering the adult entertainment industry💋🍑🍆🕵️‍♂️

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