So yesterday was my birthday. A pretty big one, too. I’m officially an adult, I suppose, now that there’s a 3 in front of my age, but to a certain extent I’m kind of excited about it. I have every intention, subliminal or not, to make this a jubilee decade – my 20s was spent working towards my dreams: college, grad school, living on my own, getting out of the IT trenches and into a more visionary role where my ideas are my currency instead of just my base of knowledge, and I think I’ve managed to accomplish all of those things.

I still want a few other things for myself though: I want to live the city life at least once in my life (which I’ve said means I should move to New York City), I want to live in the Pacific Northwest (Seattle, namely, with frequent visits to Portland because I hear they have awesome beer) because it just feels like a cultural and political home for me. I also want to take my freelancing full-time; eventually make my writing my primary job instead of my side gig. Those things will come in due time as long as I treat myself well and the stars see fit to give me the days on earth to march toward those goals.

There are other smaller things I want to do, things I can do any time and things I’m already working on – eating better, exercising, getting myself more familiar with fine wine and spirits (because you know, every classy gentleman should know how to pick a good wine and what flavors to look for when you taste a nice brandy), being a bit more social and less reclusive, taking more risks in the kitchen and really enjoying the technology that I’ve spent so much money investing in…you know how it is. Living your life and never going to bed saying “man I wish I had done more today.” It’s an ongoing process, and it’s admittedly lofty, but I think it’s doable.

So yesterday was my birthday, and I don’t think I’ve felt so loved in a really long time – people I haven’t talked to in years came out of the woodwork to wish me well and remind me that they still love and care for me: my parents had absolutely no intention of letting me spend the day by myself, so they dropped by in the mid-afternoon (after letting me sleep in from the night before’s random late-night excursion for drinks with some friends I wouldn’t have expected would call me) and brought some lamb chops with them. They cooked a lovely birthday dinner for me and we celebrated in my apartment. They even brought a nice little cake to share, so I even had a birthday cake.

It all just fell together, but in the way of gifts, my parents tossed a little cash my way and brought along a lovely fleece blanket to help keep me warm over the cold weather months. It just so happened that I got paid for my Must Have Mobile Apps piece at PopSci back in September this week, and I got another present from PopSci in the form of my first bylined article there, Top of the Food Chain Tech, or technologies that are all but finished evolving, even if they’ve had long and illustrious histories of innovation. I really can’t say how happy I am to add Popular Science to my freelancing credentials.

Add to this the fact that my piece for Tom’s Hardware should go live next week, and there’s another lovely birthday present for you. That’s another crew I’m more than thrilled to write for. I also got a couple of bucks for fixing my friends’ boyfriend’s computer and scrubbing it clean of the viruses he managed to get on it, I got a nice reward from my boss at the day job for some hard work I’ve been doing lately, and my boss’s boss at the day job was getting rid of his Magic Chef wine fridge (the kind that actually has a compressor, instead of the thermoelectric nonsense I’ve been used to! Score!) and offloaded it to me for free (it is now chilling a bottle of peach lambic and a bottle of blueberry wine).

Add to it the fact that my dearest friend Pastilla sold me the XBox 360 she picked up on Sellout Woot a while back at even a discount from that price, the one and only lovely Narilka gifted me a copy of Left 4 Dead 2 via Steam for when it comes out completely unexpectedly (thank you so so much!), and that I’m eagerly awaiting shipment of my shiny new plasma tv and blu-ray player, and I think I made out pretty well for this birthday season.

In addition to the gifts, I managed to catch up with a number of friends I haven’t spoken to in ages, and I think I’ll be spreading some time across a couple of World of Warcraft servers, since a number of them play in different places. I sense some character transfers in my future, and my Facebook profile lit up with tons of people coming out of the woodwork – some of whom I haven’t spoken to in years – wishing me well and wanting to reconnect. I can’t even communicate how thrilled I am about it all. The first half of this year was pretty rough and looking down a bit, but so far the second half of 2009 has been absolutely amazing.

So to the point of the image above, I can say I’m locked in I suppose – trying to keep my eyes on the prize and remembering that I am, by no means whatsoever, alone. Thank you all so so much.