I woke up early this morning next to my girl. She coaxed me into staying in bed with her a little bit longer than usual –– until about 9:30 a.m. –– because I had turned twenty-eight-years-old while I was asleep the night before.

After an hour or so of nuzzling and dozing in and out of sleep, I climbed out of bed. I brushed my teeth. I took a piss. I pulled on my clothes. I slipped into my boots. And, I packed up my stout burlap duffle bag that carries me from my place to her's and back again in the evenings that we share together.

As she was seeing me out, she asked me if I had anything special planned for the day (save for dinner with her, that evening, at one of our favorite Eastside spots).

I gave her a hug and a kiss and I said, "No. Not really. Just writing."

When your birthday falls five days after the new year, it's impossible not to find yourself in deep reflection. I've always taken my birthday seriously. Not in a celebratory sense. I'm not the type that wants to get a bunch of friends together to watch as I blow out candles.

But, I do take life seriously and I do view life as a luxury and I do feel that the very least I can do to show a sense of gratitude to God or the universe or whoever or whatever created me, is to take a moment once a year to pause.

Because I'm a writer, much of this pausing takes place on the page; the page you're reading now.

I think it's a bit cliche when folks write out a bunch of life lessons on their birthday, conveniently matching the number of lessons with the number of years they've spent on this Earth. But, I do appreciate the novelty and simplicity of a good, clean list. It makes a beautifully complicated thing like life feel more approachable, more digestible.

So, while I'm not going to number them, I am going to share some ideas, questions, thoughts and broodings swimming about my mind this afternoon in the midst of all this reflection.

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If you tackle something ambitious each and every month, by the end of the year you will have been ambitious on a dozen separate occasions... My only goal for 2022 is to do something ambitious each month. For January, I'm releasing 31 spoken word poems (one per day) over on TikTok. While I highly doubt I will gain much notoriety for this, by the end of the month I will have a neat creative project I can't point to.

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You can be a mostly happy person while at the same time having moments of deep, inexplicable melancholy. Or, at least this is the story I'm telling myself.

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I've found that melancholy (and/or sadness) is stunted through gratitude or exercise. It's damn difficult to be grateful and sad at the same time. And, while you can certainly be sad while you exercise, exercise allows you to get out of your head and into your body; and it gifts you reprieve from thinking about the sadness, at least for a little while.

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It's hard to do something rash after a good, long walk.

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The further you get into a romantic relationship, the harder it becomes to keep the romance alive because somewhere along the way you forget to hold her hand or graze her leg or reach over and kiss her on her cheek or run your fingers through her hair. But, if you can make these small gestures a daily practice, they will no longer become a practice and, instead, an almost subconscious way in which you express love to your significant other.

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Romance isn't the candlelit dinner. Romance is holding her hand.

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If you aren't receiving the applause you think your work deserves, don't be discouraged –– you could just be creating for a taste that doesn't exist yet.

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If you wouldn't do it if nobody was watching, don't do it.

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As you approach the same age as your parents when they had you, you gain great empathy for them, realizing that like you, they were just kids trying to figure it all out along the way.

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While it's certainly fashionable to paint your parents as monsters, especially in this day in age, I can't and I'm grateful for that; I'm standing on the shoulders of giants.

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You don't forgive for others. You forgive for yourself.

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Half of falling in love is wanting to; half of falling in love is choosing to.

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Making love last is refusing to jump ship when you see the waterfall raging on the horizon.

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I blame cancel culture entirely on Nintendo 64, for making it so goddamn easy to "rage quit" when things weren't going your way.

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You can't rage quit life. So, lean in.

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Make the world a place you will miss when you're gone.

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If you can condition yourself to get a sick pleasure out of misery and suffering, your ability to weather misery and suffering will increase by tenfold. You do this by intentionally placing misery and suffering in your life in a safe and productive way: running five miles, sitting in a piping-hot sauna, fasting, moving heavy weights, etc.

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Advertising is for the pocketbook. Poetry is for the soul.

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To totally enjoy the party, you have to know when it's time to leave the party.

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Fuck, I should have bought Bitcoin.

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Don't apologize for your emotions. Apologize for being an asshole for your emotions.

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If you find yourself refreshing your feed more than once, it's probably a good indicator that it's time to log off.

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I've got to stop reading so many books at once.

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Cursing in your writing was edgy two years ago, now it's becoming overplayed.

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"Damn..."

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Lastly, birthday or not, you should spend your day how you would spend your last day.

When my girl asked me earlier this morning if I had anything special planned for the day, I would have still gotten at the same thing but I would have rephrased my response slightly.

Let's go back to the beginning.

As she was seeing me out, she asked me if I had anything special planned for the day (save for dinner with her, that evening, at one of our favorite Eastside spots).

I gave her a hug and a kiss and I said, "Yes. I do. I'm going to spend the day writing and then I'm going to have dinner with you..."

Find a craft worth dying for. Find a person worth dying for. And then, live each and every day for both.

But, I digress.

By Cole Schafer.