A gift to myself

According to my mother, I was birthed into this world late in the morning, on the 6th day of July in the year 1989 (a small part of me is bummed that I didn’t arrive into this world at precisely 10:11 am). That means today is my 36th birthday.

Contrary to other people, I never cared about posting something on July 6th here on the blog. Since 2017, the year I stared this blog, I only posted twice on July 6th: back in 2018 I wrote a blog post about typography and spacing in CSS—something I have to revisit considering my approach has changed quite a bit—and last year I posted a picture from my weekend getaway. In that post, I wrote:

There will be a time to share and elaborate on all the mental struggles and the inner difficulties. But that day is not today.

Well, that day could be any day, so it might as well be today. I am currently sitting at my desk, typing this blog post. I won’t spend a weekend away this year to celebrate my birthday. In fact, I’m not celebrating my birthday at all. For reasons unclear to me, thinking about my 36th birthday has put me in weird moods over the past week or so which is probably why I don’t feel like celebrating.

That said, I did spend some time thinking about gifts. And more specifically, what I should gift to myself. I found that to be a fun mental exercise. Like many people—most people?—I do have things I want. Some are things I want but can’t afford to buy as a present to myself: a house, a piece of forest. Those will have to wait.

Then I have other things that I could buy and are currently saved in a wishlist. And yet none of those items felt like an appropriate gift to myself this year. Ultimately, the answer to the gift question came to me while sitting in meditation. There are two things I should gift myself: kindness and time.

I am very self-judgmental and there are many, many aspects of who I am that I don’t enjoy. I look at myself and all I see are the failures and shortcomings. I see the things I didn’t manage to do. I see the things I did poorly. I see the times I disappointed others. I see the times I let others down. I see my inability to take proper care of my body. I see my inability to take things seriously.

I see many things that I don’t like. And I judge. Judging is what I do when it comes to myself. That is something I’m apparently very good at. I know it’s bad. I know it doesn’t improve the situation. And yet I still do it.

But that is why I want to gift myself those two things. I want to gift myself the same kindness I’m usually capable of extending to others, because deep down I know I deserve it. And I want to gift myself the time to change things, without putting needless pressure on myself. Because I’m not already 36. I am just 36.

My current life experiments are all focused on the mind but I noticed that I’m very unhappy with my body, for a variety of reasons. But unlike my mind, I know that is not something I can fix quickly. Which is why I’m gifting myself time, in addition to kindness. Time to do things properly, time to take care of myself. I’m going to gift myself one year to turn things around and I can’t wait to write about this again on July 6th, 2026.